Summit Strings Cuba Concert

Summit Strings began in 2008 when our most senior local violin and viola students began playing ensemble music together on a regular basis. It has evolved as students moved away, moved on, graduated or what-have-you. For a couple of years we had a tight group of five, and they anchored the first half of a community concert last year. There are only three of them now. All three sing in Corazón too, which is kind of neat, and the older two will be participating in the big choir trip to Cuba next month. Sophie isn't eligible based on her age, but we hope she'll be able to do cool trips in future years.

They decided that a full-length concert would be a good way to raise money for the trip to Cuba. Sophie, good sport that she is, was fine with doing all the work required to support the others. I did some arranging and gleaning and transposing, vetting repertoire (a lot of it new, though some recycled from previous years) with their input. And then we spent the winter rehearsing. There was a nadir in motivation in November, but they rallied and as it got closer to performance time there was some real energy and excitement there. It was a big program with lots of varied repertoire. Not all of it was challenging, but some of it definitely was, and the sheer volume of music they had to get to know made for some pretty long, hard-working rehearsals.

Noah and Danika put together a poster-board presentation about the choir, about Cuba, and about the trip the group will be doing. We cooked a bunch of Cuban-inspired appetizers for intermission, designed and printed tickets, wrote and submitted ads and press releases, created posters and plastered the community. And we came up with background information to introduce the music.

It was a packed house, and the fund-raising proceeds were beyond what we expected. The community was so generous and supportive. It was a wonderful performance with lots of good feeling surrounding it.

March Break for Fiona

March Break, the one- or two-week spring schools holiday, has never had much to do with us, other than loosening up our out-of-home activities schedule. But with Sophie in school full-time, and Noah part-time, it's gained relevance this year. Those two headed off to Montreal to visit their big sister. And that has made Fiona an only child for a week. With siblings gone and activities on hold, we felt we needed something nice to fill things up.

We had to drive to Calgary to get the middle two on their flight. So Fiona and I made a excursion out of it. We spent a half day at the new Calgary Science Centre (better than the old one, but still not in our top three, and over-run by busloads of Alberta schoolkids who are not on their March Break for another week or so). We went shopping for summer things. Fiona is a great shopper. She likes clothes, but has an eye for bargains and a healthy skepticism for brand names. She was very excited to buy a tank top for gymnastics. After holding our breaths all year, we were finally able to get her registered for gymnastics beginning in April. So buying a gym tank was a major highlight. Then we picked up a couple of small items other people had asked us to buy for them, and in the process wandered past a place that offered ear piercing. Fiona had decided a couple of years ago that she would pierce her ears when she was 9, and then a couple of weeks ago had decided the time was finally right. So she marched in and asked the person at the sales desk and within ten minutes had some lovely little studs in her lobes.

The next notable excursion was to the zoo. We took the C-Train rapid transit system there, which was an exciting adventure all in itself. We enjoyed the penguins, and assorted other wacky animals. It's a relatively small zoo, with enclosures that aren't nearly as spacious and natural-looking as those in Toronto.  We talked a bit about the ethics of zoos.

While Montreal was enjoying summer-like temperatures, we were having a blustery cold day, so we mostly stuck with the indoor exhibits. New to us was the plant and butterfly Conservatory which had opened a little over 2 years ago. Fiona was absolutely entranced. It was quiet, and warm and practically creaking and squeaking with the sounds of growing plants. We spent almost half our zoo time with the plants.

The next day we got up super early and headed to Lake Louise ski area. We put in a few huge runs. It was cold, though the sun did its best to warm things up a little. Fiona got to experience her first rides in a gondola, and on various chair lifts. She was amazed by the length of the lifts and the runs. 

We had a lot of hours of driving ahead of us, so we didn't stay beyond lunch-time, but it was a lovely morning. 

Now we're home, and poking around for a few special things to do here too. Today Fiona cooked dinner for her parents and her grandma. We had Tuscan Bean Soup, fresh-baked herb buns, and tapioca pudding for dessert. She had a little help along the way with the main course, but mostly it was her cooking that brought it all to fruition. 

Mileage and blisters

Marathon training is going pretty well. The green line shows the number of kilometres I've run per week of my training schedule. It's increased dramatically as the weeks have passed, taking "step-back weeks" on occasion to allow my body recovery time following two or three weeks of significant increases. That's the sensible way to do it, I'm told, and it seems to be working. No significant injuries thus far.

It's a lot of running for me. To put this mileage in perspective, look at my monthly trend over the past couple of years. January '12 was an all-time high-mileage month for me: about 70% more kilometres than I'd ever run in a month before. February was higher again, and March will almost certainly be higher than February.

The really cool thing is that this peak in mileage has occurred even though it is the absolute most difficult time of year to run. The treadmills at the fitness centre are both broken this year, so I haven't even had that option. Look at last winter's mileage: nothing in December, and not much more than that until May. But I haven't let the cold temperatures and occasionally atrocious road conditions dissuade me this year.

I'm trying to increase my barefoot mileage. That's the orange-red line on the first graph. Weather conditions have turned out not to be nearly the obstacle I had thought, but it took me a while to realize that. By week 9 I began really pushing to increase my barefoot mileage and moved my distance from 2-3 km at a time up to 8 km. I also built up to being able to run barefoot on back-to-back days as my soles seemed to be getting well enough conditioned to be resistant to damage. Last week's big spike unfortunately produced a blister the day I did 15 barefoot km's after 11 soggy shod km's. I think the blister was already well on its way when I dropped my shoes -- which was in fact why I dropped them -- but the barefoot running wasn't any better, and of course has suffered more this week for the blister. Still, I'm hopeful that a week of duct tape and some moderation will fix that.

And here again is my cumulative 2012 mileage ticker. I wonder if I'll meet my goal for the year by running my marathon on May 6th? After that the trails will have opened up, and I expect I'll be happily running through the forest, having abandoned training goals and simply enjoying being out there. Fewer charts and graphs, more photos.

Recital time

It's been a challenging year musically for all three kids. Erin moved away, and though the other kids would never articulate that she was a motivating force in their music studies, she certainly "normalized" diligent daily practicing around our house. Not only that, but as a member of the Suzuki group class and of Summit Strings she had provided herself as one of the scarce "advanced role models" in our little musical backwater. 

Sophie started school full-time in September. And she joined Corazón Youth Choir. Both of which have enriched her life in many ways, but have also eaten up the lion's share of her creative energy and time. The lifestyle change involved in going to school is not to be under-estimated. And so, with very little time and motivation going into her violin, she decided to drop lessons last fall. She continued to prepare ensemble music for the Summit Strings concert which was a huge program they presented a couple of weeks ago.

She's continuing to mess around with her violin, working on some little Kreisler pieces that she likes, and she's asked for occasional coaching from me or her grandmother. She plans to get back to working consistently on her violin and would like to attend SVI this summer. For this recital she chose to play "Meditation from Thais" with her Summit Strings sidekick Danika. It was an oldie for both of them, easy to pull out and perform without too much polishing work required. It's tough to play in unison with just one other person; I thought they did an excellent job.

Noah had an almost full-time course load at school last semester and the lifestyle change struck him amidships as well. He had a viola lesson on September 9th and that was the end of it. He had been getting monthly or bimonthly lessons in Calgary for the previous two years but he had always hated the travel and felt guilty about the scanty work he'd done between lessons. We were taking Erin, so bringing him along was no big deal and he tolerated it. But this year, with his work ethic on viola still suffering, Erin moved away and no one providing us with a very good reason to drive for two days every month, we decided to just let the lessons go. 

Like Sophie, he's continued to be committed to the Summit Strings ensemble music and performances. And he did a couple of Symphony gigs with me in Cranbrook, where he showed a lot of improvement in orchestral skills and confidence. But as for practicing solo repertoire, that pretty much stopped last August. Yet he pulled out the first movement of Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, which he had almost finished learning the notes of last summer, and in his usual infuriating way put a mere couple of hours of practicing into bringing up to a fair degree of polish. It's a really big piece, both technically and musically. He did some masterful work with it in very short order.

Fiona continues to take weekly lessons with her grandmother. And for the most part she practices. But with Erin moved away and Noah and Sophie spending so little time on their instruments and doing so many exciting things away from home and away from Fiona, it has been hard to stay motivated. More so than the other kids Fiona's interests have always been socially driven to an extent: she loves doing things in part because the people she loves also like doing them. But she is beginning to figure out that violin playing has value for herself as an individual, not just as a member of a musically active sibship. And so she keeps working away, is looking forward to SVI and continues to practice most days. She played the first movement from Handel Sonata No. 3 in F Major.

Doodling

Fiona and I have both been enjoying doodling lately. The internet is full of inspiration: repeating patterns, geometric iterations, fill patterns, awe-inspiring creations. Suggested search keywords: zenspirations, zentangles, tangle patterns, zendoodle.

Fantastic for fine-motor control, creativity, geometric awareness, and just chilling while listening to a readaloud, audiobook or podcast.

Check your boots

When you hike a couple of hundred metres through the nasty snow and frozen slush of your laneway to reach the road for a barefoot run, it's sometimes nice to wear your boots, especially if you know you'll be doing your longest barefoot run to date and coming home with tired feet that have been pushed to the limits of their comfort. So you wear your boots and leave them at the top of the laneway to await your return 90 minutes later.

It might be good to return while it's still light out, with your powers of observation still keenly functional. Because as you near your boots you might notice the small furry presence of a field mouse considering moving into a new home. And therefore as you move closer you'll notice that, startled by your approach, he has now scurried into the safety of the dark neoprene-insulated recesses of your right winter Muck boot.

And so you thankfully you take the time to invert your right boot (and the left, I might add, just as a precaution!) and give it three good shakes to dislodge any would-be tenants.

Running discoveries

I run with my dog

Who'd have thought that almost three years into this I'd still be discovering completely new things about running? Yet this is how it is, and that's what keeps it all fun and interesting.

First, I had an absolutely terrible long run a week or so ago. It was only 24 km, and I had managed 30 the week before without difficulty. But that fateful day my calves felt tight and sore and within 4 km I was feeling achey in my feet, ankles and knees. It went on like that for the next three hours as I got progressively slower and more demoralized. Yuck.

The next day I went out to at least try and stretch my legs a bit and work some of the aches out. Within a minute or two I felt great. My running mojo was back and my body felt fine.

Why? The only explanation I could come up with was that my nasty long run had been the second of two runs in a row in shoes. My mojo-ful run was barefoot. Shoes are hurting me. A shod run once in a while my body seems able to handle. Two days in a row is too much. At that point I'd better get back to barefoot, or to huaraches at the most.

I accidentally repeated the experiment. Yesterday I had run in shoes because there was lots of gravel on the highway and I was doing a tempo run (i.e. a fast-paced run). And today the conditions were blizzard-like, so I put the shoes on again. The sore calves were back with a vengeance and the aching in the ankles and knees began within 5 minutes. I figured that was due to the previous day's hard and fast run and hoped it would wear off if I ran slowly. It didn't. By the 4 km mark I had reached a point of angry frustration and I took the silly shoes off. Barefoot, the discomfort vanished after a few steps and never returned. Hmm. Hypothesis confirmed, it seems.

Which led me to more on my second discovery which is that running barefoot in the winter isn't really that big a deal. Dry asphalt is a dream, even down to minus 10ºC. Wet asphalt is more challenging, but if I warm my body up to the point where I feel I am just beginning to sweat, and then drop the shoes, my feet are pumping enough heat through them to stay quite comfortable. If I don't go through that warm-up period the cold feels uncomfortable for the first 8 or 9 minutes but once the furnace turns on I'm good. I was leery of running in snow, though. Running through occasional patches of it had always been such a shock to my soles. But today I was kind of forced into it -- or else bail on my run -- and I discovered that it's really not bad. Snow is kind to the feet from an abrasion and cushioning standpoint. There may have been gravel on the highway, but the snow buried it, and the conforming cushioning of the accumulating flakes was soft and enjoyable. Sure, it was cold, particularly when it was deep enough that it was brushing past the tops of my feet. And I would wear a warmer jacket and hat if I was planning a run like that again. But it's certainly no hardship to run in the snow.

Third discovery: my feet are getting much stronger and smarter. Last summer I read the Centre for Endurance Sport's Criteria for Successful Barefoot Transitioning and discovered that the one-leg balance test was something I failed on my right leg every time. My left foot was up to the 30-second task, but my right was rarely capable of going more than 10 or 12 seconds. I repeated the test a couple of weeks ago and now I can not only stand more or less indefinitely on each foot flat on the ground, but I can manage 20 seconds on my toes (much more challenging!) on my left foot and 12 or 14 on my right foot. So there's still a bit of a difference, but both feet are much stronger.

Final discovery: low heart-rate training, also known as the Maffetone method. It's a formulaic approach to the basic strategy of running really slowly and easily most of the time, maybe even all of the time, when training for an endurance sport like distance running. Using the Maffetone method you calculate a maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 180 (with some possible modifying criteria) and you use a heart rate monitor to ensure your training runs don't have you exceeding that. I've been trying to stay within these parameters for almost two months. Not obsessively so, but mostly managing. It takes a lot of trust in the approach to run that slowly. In the past most of my day-to-day runs would have my heart rate ranging from 138 to 162. To consistently keep it below 135 meant a much slower pace. And to do that day after day, shuffling along at a pace two or three minutes per mile slower than had been my habit, never putting the pedal to the floor or anything even close, and then to trust that you are indeed getting fitter and faster ... well it's certainly an exercise in patience.

I mentioned my tempo run yesterday. That was only my second faster-than-a-shuffle run since December.  I started out aiming to run moderately hard and hit an average pace in the green zone (see graph). But it felt great, and after the first half which was the uphill leg I still had lots in the tank so I poured it on during the downhill return. I beat my target pace by a lot and shaved almost a full minute off my all-time record for 5k, a record I'd set in July 2009 when I was doing lots of fast hard runs and was two and a half years younger. Fifty-three seconds is a huge improvement, especially considering I didn't really turn it on until half way through. So hey, this approach actually works! I'm happily back to running slowly, now confident that it's the right approach. I continue to mind my Garmin when it beeps to remind me to slow to almost-a-walk as I climb a hill.

One last graphic, to show my year to date relative to my (admittedly conservative) mileage goal. Not bad for the last week of February!

TOPScience

Just over a month ago Fiona received her favourite Festivus gift. I bought her a set of four TOPS Chemistry units, complete with the equipment and supplies kits that made them completely self-contained and drop-dead simple to implement in the kitchen. While I'm by nature a scrounger and a make-do-er, I've recognized that the little details involved in, say, finding a little household iodine solution are often time-consuming and sometimes delay the implementation of whatever activity someone wants to do. The learning momentum can easily collapse when there are multiple delays.

So we splurged and got the little kits containing ziplocs of common chemicals, test tubes and pipettes. We had some of that stuff, but the package deal was so simple.

We're both really impressed with the task-oriented teaching in the units. Fiona has just about finished the first of the four units, the one on chemical analysis. It's described as being suitable for Grades 5-10, and though it's perfect for Fiona, I think it would be a pretty light-weight program for a high schooler. Still, it's far more in-depth and sensibly, workably hands-on than similar programs I've seen.

Pictured above is her red-cabbage-water indicator at various pHs. From left to right: pH=3 (with vinegar), pH=6 (with a single drop of vinegar) pH=6.5 (straight cabbage water), pH=9 (with kitchen cleanser) and pH=13 (with lye).

TOPScience can be ordered here.

Running mileage

Here is my running mileage during 2011 and thus far in 2012, broken down by month. At least, these are the runs I used my Garmin for -- most of them, to be sure.

There are two obvious nadirs. One was in August/September, when I hurt my foot. I did a lot of biking during that time, but didn't run for about 7 weeks.

Then there's last winter, shown at the beginning of the graph. Winter is a tough time to run around here. The trails are inaccessible, the road is gnarly and slushy and slippery and boring.

Which is why I'm pleased with my mileage this year. It hasn't been easy. The treadmills at the fitness centre are both broken so I'm stuck with the outdoor conditions, whatever they are. I've run in -23ºC temperatures, in fog with driving sleet, through mounds of slush, across gleaming slopes of ice, through snow that had me high-stepping, I've developed an appreciative relationship with the snowplough crew whom I tend to see most days lately (I cross the road, they honk and wave thanks, I wave thanks), I've arrived home soaked to the skin or with heaps of snow piled on my shoulders and head. January last year I ran 5 km. This year I'll have run 250 km by the end of the month.

My beloved Minimuses are beginning to fall apart after about 700 km of use. I can't wait to pick up a pair of Minimus WT Zeros, the upcoming, even-more-minimalist shoe due out in March or April. I'll have to come up with something in the meantime. I've noticed that my Merrells tend to trigger my Achilles tendonitis, so I've set them aside for now. I'm thinking of picking up some New Balance WT110s. They're the evolved descendant of the WT100s I bought a year and a half ago, enjoyed for a few weeks and then surrendered to Erin, who needed them more than I did, liked them a lot and continues to run in them. I liked them during my brief stint with them in 2010, and I think I'll probably like the pared-down newer model even better.

Math Watershed, the 4th Edition

The math watershed occurs in our family when the kids finish the Singapore Primary Math program. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions of the math watershed occurred around age 10 for my three elder kids respectively. That was too young for a traditional academic high school program, especially after the friendly, unintimidating, low-repetition approach of the Singapore Primary consumable workbooks. We made a lot of stabs at finding the right next step and I really didn't feel like I found the right approach with any of them. There was a lot of fallow time, a lot of treading water, or starting out one direction and then back-tracking. Eventually they all sidled into Canadian high school math courses just fine, but there was 3-4 years of aimlessness before they developed the maturity to tackle them.

When Fiona finished Singapore Primary Math at age 8, I felt it was even more important to find a suitable next step, since she was even younger than her siblings, and very keen on continuing her formal math work. So neither of us was really willing to wait through 5 or 6 years of aimlessness.

So far we've been thrilled with Challenge Math by Ed Zaccarro. At the top of the cover it says "Math is often taught as all scales and no music. This book contains the music!" It's a very apt description. It's intended to provide enrichment for children in Grades 4 through 9. Fiona fits smack in the middle of that range in terms of her math level (~Grade 7-ish) and the book is perfect for her. It has a friendly layout with occasional yet undistracting cartoon characters offering insights and fun quips. It isn't overly dense. The problem sets are appropriately varied and sometimes humorous. (eg. A snail-year correlates with a light-year, being the distance a snail can travel in a year.) There are "Einstein problems" for extra challenge, which Fiona seems to be managing just fine. And the concepts and problem-solving approaches are explicitly taught with clarity. Yet it has a more textbook-ish mature format than the Singapore Primary workbooks, and it requires more in the way of creative synthesis of skills and ideas.

I have a feeling that this book (and perhaps one or two of the others from Zaccarro's series) will provide the perfect segué into one of the Singapore secondary programs for Fiona. We'll likely give New Syllabus Math a go, one of the newer secondary programs, which has consumable workbooks and a less dense presentation than NEM or NMC. I expect Fiona will spend a year or so expanding her ability to apply K-7 math skills to deeper and more complex problem-solving through Zaccarro's books and then she'll jump into high school materials very well-prepared.

Best Pizza

 We make pizza almost once a week around here. It's a flexible go-to meal for us. So long as someone takes ten minutes to get the dough started sometime between 2:30 and 4:30 pm, it's a quick and easy meal that we can all pitch in to get made in less than half an hour (plus baking time).

Over the years our toppings have gone through many evolutionary steps. There were the early years when certain kids would not eat anything that wasn't approximately white, so we'd cook one pizza with only cheese, just a molecular layer of marinara sauce, and sometimes a sprinkling of corn kernels. There were the years none of the kids would eat mushrooms, or olives, or peppers ... and so we made one of two pizzas with those things omitted. And then when we had a mix of vegetarians and carnivores, we would have a veggie pizza and one with half meat.

Now with more mature tastes and the demise of our vegetarian ways, anything goes. And this week we adapted one of our favourite panini recipes to the top of one of our pizzas. (The panini omits the marinara sauce and mozzarella cheeses.) The pizza toppings are:

• caramelized onions with a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar, 
• chopped dried figs, 
• spicy beef or pork sausage of some sort, 
• fresh spinach and 
• a sparing mix of cow mozzarella and goat chèvre cheeses. 

1-1-1-1-1-Enough Pizza Dough
1 cup lukewarm water
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
enough flour to make a just-barely-no-longer-sticky dough

Mix, adding flour gradually. Stand mixer with dough hook makes it easy. Allow to rise covered in a warm place until doubled. Punch down, roll/throw/stretch out. Makes enough dough for one 16" pizza.

Using school to fit our needs

Compared to what the kids' educations looked like several years ago, things are much more varied and piecemeal these days. I used to have four kids hanging out and playing at home and in the community, pursuing learning entirely outside of the sphere of influence of school. Now very much fall within the sphere of influence of the school and its community.

I've always liked our local school. A lot. And not just for its community-mindedness. It's staffed by good people who do good teaching. Not necessarily in a format that was more appropriate for my kids than our unschooled home-based learning, but good stuff nonetheless. And therefore when Erin, and then Sophie, and then Noah, decided that they wanted a change of format and were welcomed with such positivity and open-mindedness, I was thrilled for them.

It's semester's end this week, and I'm thinking about how school has become such a part of our lives in unique flexible ways that suit our family.

Sophie is going through her first slate of exams. Two yesterday, and two today. She entered with more trepidation than the endeavour deserved, she's realized. Her experience thus far has showed her that diligence during the term combined with a bit of preparatory review makes the exam-writing itself un-stressful and leads to excellent results. No big deal! She'd been hearing warnings and negative things about exams from other students but has found the experience simple and gratifying. She'll have tomorrow off school and we'll probably head to the ski hill.

Academically Sophie is a grade level ahead in a couple of courses and "on grade level" in the rest. Overall she's not particularly challenged, and her teachers do recognize this, but she is enjoying the experience and the fact that top marks are easily within her grasp. I'm not sure whether she'll continue to be happy toeing the standard school line, but I suspect she will. If not I know that the school will work with her to give her what she wants.

Noah is also having his first exams. He's harder to read, and hasn't received any results yet, but he seems to be coming through things with a can-do attitude and no undue worries. This was the guy who used to break down in tears when his piano teacher suggested playing a game that involved scoring his note-naming ability each week. He seems to have grown into the maturity necessary to deal with having his learning performance judged and graded. He's in school part-time, and despite a heavy schedule this semester his school schedule will drop back to mornings only after next week.

Both kids benefit from the innovation and flexibility of the school in pursuing their interests. Tuesday afternoons they take a block out of school to get to Corazon rehearsals. Next week they'll be doing a week-long photography workshop, using film cameras, making pinhole cameras, getting into a darkroom for some vinegar-scented experience there as their elective week. They're always welcome to miss school days to pursue music trips or whatever. And next semester Noah will be earning credit for PE, Digital Media and Science for his home-based learning, making use of school facilities as he wishes.

Erin's program with the school was a part-time one the past three years, similar to what Noah is doing now. She has proven herself to be highly capable and driven to achieve, with a healthy attitude to any necessary hoop-jumping. This year she's not present at all in the school but she's doing four or five courses electronically through the school and hasn't done much on any of them. First she had 6 weeks of internet access issues. Then she headed into preparation for auditions in January and February and the tour to China in December-January. So she's only put a small dent in her course-work. And her teachers are fine with this. They know that when she says she'll get around to working seriously on the courses after the McGill audition in late February, she'll do it, and move ahead really quickly. She's earned their trust.

Fiona is currently enjoying just the right balance of home and out-of-home experiences, several of which involve the school or people from the school. On Monday she attends the Summit Strings rehearsal with her siblings and another teen. On Tuesday she travels to Nelson with four to six teenagers from the school and stops along the way for Corazon rehearsal. Wednesdays have been ski days this month, putting her at the ski hill with the entire K-7 student body from the school, plus a handful of homeschoolers, for lessons and fun skiing with friends and family. Alternate Wednesday afternoons mean Suzuki group class held at the school. Thursdays are home-based, and Fridays often are as well, but she's often ready for a bit of time at home by that point in the week. Noah is home more on those days, so there's company. And some weeks include Friday homeschool activities hosted at the school: either meetings with our liaison teacher or day-long art workshops with the other local homeschoolers.

The amount of structure created by our out-of-home commitments helps to structure Fiona's at-home time as well, since we have to be intentional about those things or they won't fit. Recently we've been starting the day with some snowshoeing around the property, violin practicing, and then some math bookwork and hands-on chemistry. World geography is an interest these days, fuelled by our read-alouds and by the large flat-screen TV Chuck bought in the after-Christmas sales. BBC's "Human Planet" and Discovery's "Atlas" series are being much enjoyed.

Most days I drive to and from the school at least twice, often three or more times what with various drop-off and pick-up times and extra activities. While I don't relish the driving, I do like the way the school can serve different functions and roles for my different kids at different times, so that it works like a buffet of possibilities.

Festivus

Erin arrived from China a week ago. She'd been there on tour with her orchestra and was on her way back to Montreal, by way of "home" in the Kootenays for a week or so. She had picked up a killer cold in China and spent the better part of the week recovering from that and from the loss of a day and a night or two what with the jetlag, dateline, red-eye flight and the inevitable sleep deprivation of a tour. She brought back photos of the terra cotta army and the Great Wall, as well as of smoggy cities, video arcades in dodgy underground plazas where she fascinated the Chinese teens with her mastery of the motocross game or some-such, markets, plazas, beaches and the like.

I killed chickens. After being vegetarian for the better part of 20 years and having two or three other avowed veg-heads in the family, I was betrayed last summer when both Erin and Sophie decided to start eating meat. My own vegetarianism suddenly seemed like rather a large family inconvenience. So I decided that if I could make my peace with the whole farmyard to table business by immersing myself in it, I'd feel okay about parting from my vegetarian ways. The task I set myself was to kill our own surplus chickens. I selected three of our now-maturing roosters, inverted them in a killing cone so that they settled into somnolence, cut their jugulars, bled them out, dipped and plucked and gutted and dressed them. Into the freezer they went.

We ate one as part of our Festivus Fondue Feast, along with plenty of cheese and veggies and some venison sausage from a friend. I'm not sure I would have been ready to eat it right after the butchering, but the couple of weeks in the freezer allowed some emotional distance for me. I ate it. It was yummy. I feel like an honest carnivore now.

Festivus was great. It snowed a delicious 35 cm of light-as-a-feather white snow overnight and through the day. It was the first big snowfall in a couple of weeks. "It's another Festivus miracle!" said Fiona.

I worried that the lack of all the decorations and music and traditional Christmas rituals would keep it from being special enough, but it was fine. We started the day with fresh-baked cinnamon buns. We opened gifts. Fiona gave me a set of six computer-printed coupons for Free Massages courtesy of herself (she gives great massages!). She imprinted my name on them so they couldn't be stolen and redeemed by other family members. "And," she warned me, "I deleted the file on the computer so you couldn't print any extras." She's got really good business sense, this girl!

The Fondue Feast was swiss cheese to start with veggies and meat, and then chocolate with fruit to finish. After the Feast, we held the Airing of Grievances during which, according to the Seinfeld episode in question, "you state all the ways that your family members have disappointed you over the previous year." Kind of a dangerous place to go, but the kids handled it with humour and sensitivity and a sense of good fun. I'm thankful we never got to the feats of strength, though there had been talk of tickle fights in lieu.

Then we finished the evening by listening to Erin practice the Bach Chaconne in the kitchen.

Settlers

Settlers of Catan. Still a favourite.

Winter feet

As I started thinking about the question of whether it would be possible to run the Vancouver marathon barefoot I realized that the big problem was going to be conditioning the soles of my feet in time. During the winter I've normally just run in minimalist shoes, leaving barefooting as a warm-weather activity. But I can only count on the snow being gone from the roads for about 6 weeks before marathon day. I decided that if I wanted the possibility of running Vancouver barefoot, I should grab any opportunities I might get to shuck my shoes even in the winter.

We had a warm spell ast the very end of December when the temperatures got up to +3 or 4ºC. I managed to run short stints barefoot. I've continued to experiment with barefoot running at a variety of temperatures this past week. I've discovered some things.

First: Warm up before shucking the shoes. Somewhere between 1-2 km are required before my body cranks its furnace up and thoroughly warms my extremities. Keeping shoes on until that point usually eliminates any discomfort from the cold. If my feet get cold, they take a long time to warm up. If I keep my shoes on during the warmup my feet don't really get cold in the first place.

Second: Dry asphalt is a breeze. With snow piled up on both sides of the road, running at just above or just around the freezing point is a real challenge because the melting snow makes the road perpetually wet. Water sucks the heat out of your feet crazy fast. Dry asphalt at minus 5 is much easier to run on than wet asphalt at plus 1.

Third: No walk breaks! Walking means your foot is in contact with the ground for a considerably higher proportion of the stride cycle ... well over 50%. Running pushes that in-contact percentage well below 50%. The result is much warmer feet when running than walking. (Standing around, even for the few seconds it takes for the dog to have a pee, is of course even worse still.)

Fourth: Worse than water, snow or ice is the gravel they spray on the roads after a snowfall. This is what is really the limiting factor in the length of my runs. The highway I run on is steep, winding and little-travelled. This means that for safety a lot of sand and gravel are applied when it snows, and it tends to stay there. I have a feeling the streets and seawall of Vancouver will be a breeze after this.

I'm not going to risk frostbite or trenchfoot. But I am planning to try to get two or three short (1-3 km) barefoot runs in a week right through the thick of the winter. It seems quite do-able at this point. Hopefully once the weather starts warming up in March and April I'll be well poised to switch most of my running miles to barefoot.

On a more general running note, I've got my weekly mileage up over 50 km for two weeks already and am feeling good.   February should average about 60k/week, March 70k/week, April a little higher, but then tapering back.

Holidays 2011

There was no Christmas in this family. We went to my mom's and ate her turkey. But other than that, no Christmas. We're waiting for Erin to get back from China next week, when she'll stop in for a week's visit.

Irish Cream. We've been making it, 3 litres at a time and enjoying it a tiny glassful each of us each night after dinner. It needs to be refrigerated, but our fridge was very full, so we put it on the deck. One day there was only one jar there. We looked around and found an empty jar on the snow on the lawn with the lid chewed off. The dog was discovered to have a very raw-looking (much-licked) snout and a complacent demeanour. We have made more room in the fridge.

Chuck bought a big TV. We had been using an old 27" model that was deeper than it was wide. Now we have a wall-mounted 46" expanse of perpetual programming. I suppose the novelty will wear off and it'll get shut off from time to time. It'll be nice for DVDs and such, but so far it's not talking very well to the input components and we're waiting for a swanky HDMI cable that's on order.

Human Planet. Great new BBC series we've been watching, similar to Planet Earth and Life but focused on human adaptations and innovations in extreme environments. Looking forward to watching it on the TV. For now, my iMac suffices.

We killed animals. My way of making peace with no longer being a vegetarian (since I was the last holdout non-meat-eater in the family). I figured that if I could kill some of our chickens with my own hands and eat them, I could then eat meat in good conscience, in full appreciation of the ethical and practical implications. So today we killed our excess roosters.

I've been running. I managed to do 53k last week, plus some crosstraining. This week will be busier, so fewer miles, but I'm off to a good start.

The kids are back to school tomorrow. We'll celebrate Erin's birthday next weekend, Festivus the following weekend and Fiona's birthday the weekend after that.

Marathon training

I decided to plan out my preparation from the moment I officially signed up for Vancouver's BMO Marathon. That has given me 25 weeks to prepare, and I'm now 3 weeks in. The past two winters I haven't had any particular running goal, and so weather and life and the inaccessibility of trails have conspired to push running out of my routine for days and weeks on end. This year it's a different matter entirely.

This year I'm running no matter what. I haven't missed a scheduled run yet and I'm thrilled. But gosh, a lot of creativity, variety and determination are required! Once I get started, though, I'm good. Here are my last few runs. You can see how much things have varied!

Distance	Temp	Run Type	Conditions	Footwear
8 km	-2ºC	Road	Compact snow	Minimus
23 km	0ºC	Road/trail	Compact snow / asphalt	Minimus
3.5 km	-5ºC	Road	Asphalt	Miminus
7 km	-7ºC	Road	Snowing / windy	Merrell Lithe Glove
5 km	-3ºC	Trail	Deep snow	Merrell Lithe Glove
16 km	-1ºC	Road	Icy asphalt	Minimus
7 km	+1ºC	Trail	Deep slush / raining	Merrell Lithe Glove
5 km	+2ºC	Road	Asphalt	Vibram Five Fingers
2 km	+2ºC	Road	Asphalt	Bare feet

The holidays have given me plenty of time to run and to think and read about running. I've resolved to keep the pace on the majority of my runs very slow, and to push my weekly mileage higher. I've only run more than 50k a week a few times. I need to get my mileage to that level soon (I'm in the 40's now), and then keep raising it to the 70 - 80 km/week level by early April.

One hundred and twenty-eight days and counting.

Graduated!

Fiona graduated from contact lens training lessons today.

Okay, she only had the one lesson so this isn't a case of hard-won mastery or anything, but she did brilliantly well and doesn't need any more training sessions, just a check on her eyes in the New Year to make sure they're coping well with the contacts. It took her a couple of tries to get the first one in but after that she popped them in and out no problem and was clearly very comfortable with the whole process. The staff were apparently very impressed, calling her a rock star, swearing she'd set some sort of record.

She loves her glasses, but they're inconvenient for things like running, soccer, trampolining, skiing. She thought she'd like the option of contacts once in a while.

I had been thinking the same thing for myself and recently began using contacts for running whenever it's snowing. What a difference not to have glasses laden with melted snowflakes, fogging up every 50 metres! I certainly understood Fiona's desire to have this option.

Thankfully our optometrist didn't dismiss her interest categorically based on her age. His philosophy was that it's more about maturity than age, and Fiona's maturity seems to fit the bill.

Festivus Owls

Fiona's sick. Getting better today, but we decided we needed to bail on running the taxi service for all those teenagers going to Corazón rehearsal in Nelson.

Instead we had an unexpected day at home together. And thanks to my shameless scouring of Etsy for craft ideas, we decided to make some felted owls. This little guy is about 2" tall. We've made four so far.

They're quick and easy. We start by making a small ball of yarn. Then we cover it in undyed wool roving by needle-felting. We shape the ear tufts, affix the coloured detailing for eyes and bill. Then we take a quick trip outside with the pruning shears to get some suitable twigs. We used orange roving looped around the twig and needle-felted onto the owl's butt to get the twig secured. On the larger owls we were able to make this look like claws. Then a quick in and out with a bit of embroidery floss using a tapestry needle and they're ready to hang. We expect we'll have a whole flock soon.

We aren't really celebrating Christmas this year. Erin won't be home until January, as she's heading to China on tour with her orchestra. So we're saving the holiday celebration and gift exchange for January 14. We're calling it Festivus (thanks to Seinfeld for the inspiration) and we're making it up as we go along. Perhaps owls are hung around the home in the days leading up to Festivus for good luck?

We've just taken part in a family Chanukkah celebration / musical event, and next week we'll be taking part in a Solstice celebration. Bits of Christmas (the music, especially!) will sneak into our December, but we're looking forward to Festivus. We're currently taking suggestions for "the traditional Festivus drink" to take the place of egg nog.

Winter minimalist footwear

Clockwise from L: Merrell Lithe Glove, Nike Lunarglide, NB Minimus

I did something to my foot in August, trotting up to the water box. It sort of settled down on its own after a couple of months. A diversion into mountain-biking kept me happy until the snow began to fly. Now it's properly winter, biking is no longer possible, my foot is fine and I'm looking for ways to keep up a decent running program through the cold months.

My ideal winter running shoe would be minimalist, toasty warm and water-resistant, and would have grippy little studs on the bottom for traction on snow and ice. As you can see, I'm using a lot of different shoes and approaches, because I haven't found my ideal winter running shoe.

Prior to last winter I had moved to minimalist footwear, but when the weather got snowy I simply went back to conventional / transitional shoes. I used YakTrax Pros, slip-on traction devices that worked pretty well on those shoes with their thick cushioned soles and substantial uppers.

This year having moved more and more to actual barefoot running I wanted to stick with minimalist shoes through the winter, but they don't cope well with traction devices. Every ridge can be felt with every step right through the sole, and the rubber straps that hold them in place collapse the thin uppers, pressing in on your foot.

I bought some Merrell Lithe Glove shoes. They have nice warm water-resistant uppers (the main reason I bought them) which are proving toasty even on the coldest days. But despite the thin soles I'm not that thrilled with the ground-feel. The rubber may be thin but it's also hard, so they feel like more shoe underfoot than I'd expected. They have poor traction on snow and ice, too. They're fine for dry pavement, but for a few days after a snow they're not my shoe of choice.

I still love my New Balance Minimus Trails. Some people found the original version too tight across the mid-foot, but for my narrow feet they were perfectly roomy. So far they're my favourite choice for winter running, because they have decent traction with their lugs, and great flexibility and ground-feel. The problem with them is that they're cold. They have a thin mesh upper, so spartan that you can actually see your foot through the fabric.

I've become a fan of SmartWool PhD socks. I have two pairs, and could probably use two or three more. They're expensive, but they're the warmest, most comfortable, most durable running socks I've found. When it's slushy, or the fresh fallen snow is soft and wet, my feet get wet right through the shoes and socks. Eventually they get cold as a result. It would be nice to have a better solution for slushy days.

Ideally I'd like a Minimus Trail with water-resistant uppers. These would be great for me, because I love the fit and the feel, and the soles are also just thick enough with the lugs that I could sink 1/4" hex-head sheet metal screws into them for ultimate traction on ice. Sheet metal screws are an inexpensive and incredibly effective hack I performed on my old Nike Lunarglides.

There are about five times as many minimalist shoes on the market this year as last, so perhaps by next winter my ideal winter running shoe will exist. In the meantime I'll be mixing it up a lot, depending on conditions. I just signed up for the Vancouver marathon, and I have a running schedule I've written up that I'm going to really try to stick to regardless of the weather. Wish me luck!