New Carpet and Living Room Tour

What is this? you ask. Did you stay at a tacky hotel recently? A: No! That is our new carpet. It's much too big for the room, it's busy and colorful, and I really like it. It's super thick wool, and the colors seem to change all the time in different lights.



I think the 'ol futon needs some different throw pillows to go with the rug, but once you start down that road you find you need new end tables, and a coffee table and some matching throws and then it's too late for you. The pillows stay for now.

We switched up the shelving thang, which used to be horizontal and between the futon and the table.





Check out that handsome fireplace. Surely there's something better that could go on the hearth, but I haven't figured it out, and it's good as-is.



Check out those hot moon bootie slippers and busy flower pattern. Sorry to make you jealous, this just comes naturally to me.

Halloween

Ok, the original costume idea went out the window while I focused on a couples costume for me and Robb- he was a beekeeper and I was a bee. I also 'remixed' my old showgirl costume for Monday's Halloween costumed CrossFit workout. I've wanted to wear corpse paint (the black and white face paint) for a number of Halloweens now, and I finally got my chance as a Black Metal Showgirl. Here I'm lifting sans feather fan, wig and headpiece.



Here's a photo with those things:



Wicked, right? I had also planned on wearing this to race in, but the morning of it was just way too hard to get up and drive two hours.

But back to the bees! Here are some process shots of the costumes, Robb's beekeeper costume first:

I made a bee smoker out of cardboard and some canvas I had left over from oil painting.



Here the green clips hold the canvas on while the glue dries. (Halloween is the worst time to misplace your hot glue gun)



Amazon provided a great, cheap Safari style straw hat that I spray painted white.



I made some bees from pipe cleaner, following and tweaking a tutorial I found. I took short sections of white tulle and wedged it between the coils for the bee wings (one of my more genius time-saving ideas).



Robb bought a suit you'd use to paint or clean, and voila! Bee keeper for probably under $30, including spray paint and all materials.



We went on a ride, the Pumpkin Pedaler, and there were several other bees there. There was a bevy of bees.



I taped off and painted a cheap yellow silk shirt I found at TJ Maxx.





I made wings from coat hangers around the house and cheap pantyhose in a coffee color- perfect! I had a specific (and anatomically correct) pattern in mind, so I drew it in Sharpie on a piece of paper. That way, I could flip over the paper and trace both wings with fabric paint (or 'puffy paint', as my mom and I used to call it).



I had no idea how to attach these suckers. I wound up winding yarn around the top and bottom pieces, and using electrical tape to secure one side to the other by matching up the curved 'hanger' part of the hanger.





I liked the angle these wound up at. I added a cutesy bow for full cutesy points.



Shoes? No ordinary shoes.



Voila! Bee shoes. The black bow they came with happened to work perfectly to tie a pom pom on.



Not pictured- I bought a cheesy springy bat headband, cut the bats off to make them more antennae-like and added a yellow bow to that as well. I also wore a wig and false eyelashes because you can! You can do these things on Halloween! And that's part of the reason why it's such an amazing holiday. Le sigh. Why can't there be like four Halloweens per year?

Is it so wrong?

I got caught up going through Lyle's photos. Sometimes I really miss the Wisconsin cross scene. There was one race at CamRock that I remember in particular, and I can't say what year it was, that it happened to be a beautiful, sunny and warm fall day in the middle of a cold streak. Maybe it was more than one year. This certainly looks like the same kind of charmed day.

Skull bong, jam box and beer cans (that were guaranteed to have been picked up and likely recycled at the end of the race). Very considerate low-level mayhem, I miss you.

Halloween Costume .5

Since this isn't a progress shot of my costume yet, we'll call this post Halloween Costume .5. These are my materials. Any guesses, from those who haven't heard the latest plan?





We've got 2.5 yards of REALLY ugly brown fur (that the pets love, you see), 100 pipe cleaners (or chenille sticks, as they're called these days) and something like 4 yards of cheap white fabric. While I may not totally agree with Columbus Day, I do agree with the sales. I think this is about all I'll need to buy or collect for the costume, which is a nice change from last year's expensive (and TOTALLY WORTH IT) costume. By the way, don't go expecting something on that level again. It's pretty much impossible.

Remember When I Used To Bike?

I do. Vaguely.

I've done a couple of local CX races since moving, two of the Asheville Cyclocross Series. The first one, the Blue Ridge CrossFit race, was just about 20 minutes from home, and hard to say no to. I was actually planning on just showing up to cheer, but the night before I thought 'Hey, I could race.'

It seems like an easy decision, but lately I've shied away from racing. In Wisconsin, I knew just who I should be ahead of and behind. I knew if it was a national champion beating me, or someone who'd just started racing the season before (ouch, that stings). I knew if someone had recently returned from having a baby, or was just entering their first year of college. Here, I have no idea where I 'should' be in the pack, and I really like it that way. Very few people in Asheville know me or my background, so I like to think I'm racing anonymously, which means a little less anxiety for me. If I show up and have less that spectacular results, I know nobody was expecting me to finish in any particular place, anyway. Feels good, man.

That said, at this past weekend's race I seemed to run into everyone in Asheville that I do know! It was good, though, and not stressful. I didn't ride much this summer (a trend that continues), and so I don't even expect much of myself. (Wow, that looks pretty sad when I type it out, there.) But onward! Two surprise friend sightings were the Becks! Aaron lives 25 min away in Hendersonville, and Jon was visiting, and they decided to try out their first cyclocross race.

I go into an information spewing mode sometimes, and the Becks bore the brunt of it that day. I remember what it was like, going to my first cyclocross race. And I've learned a lot since. What I'm starting to realize is that there's simply not enough time to convey all of that information to someone in the 45 minutes before their race. AND that they (the victim) may not want to be bombarded by info. Whoops. So if I have come off as a know-it-all to you, please know that I was just trying to help. And that I lack impulse control.

On to the race report, shall we? The course was almost perfectly flat, and bumpy, and had some good corners and a nice tough straight-away. For those following along in Wisconsin, it was like the old Whitewater course, without the elevation change of the two little dips and climbs on the edge of the field. I suspect this was even bumpier, though. My lady parts were tenderized throughout the 30 minute race, and took a few days to recover. Sure, that might be TMI, but come on, it's a great way to convey how bumpy the course was, right?

In the local series, all categories of women race with the Men's C's. In the WI 2's races, I was the one being passed by the quick masters, but here in the combined categories, it is I who am doing the passing. It can get annoying (as I'm sure I was in WI) but it is nice to have more people to 'race' against. I also delighted in passing people in the barriers. Only once was I held up, and the rest of the laps, I used the barriers to pass men and gain ground on some of the ladies following me. I may be out of shape, but I can mount and dismount like a champ. Please don't mistake that for pride- that's me clinging to the shreds of a racing career.

Barriers! I felt faster than I look here.


For the last few laps of the race, I went back and forth with a girl. She pulled ahead of me and I sat in, then I cut to the inside of her and got about 10 yards on her through the barriers. We traded on and off in a few sections, and during the last lap I wanted to keep her behind me until the barriers again, but she pulled ahead of me before the straightaway on the back of the course, and I couldn't respond.

Anyway, there's not much more to it. It was fun and it was great to see so many people I knew. At one point, I thought there must be another Katy out on the course, because I was hearing my name yelled so often! Although, there was a Kaysee. Hmmmm.

It feels good to be doing some anonymous racing. Here's to more of that.

Mobius Snips

GET IT?!

Silver Ball Pinball Museum

This past weekend Robb and I were up in New Jersey for All Tomorrow's Parties. The music was great, but that was expected. What was not expected was the awesome free admission to the even more awesome pinball museum, Silver Ball.



Robb slipped back into the groove with the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom pinball machine that he used to play as a kid. I was pretty awful at just about everything but inexplicably won when we played The Challenger, a two-player machine that tilted back and forth.



IN YOUR FACE.

For the most part, I wandered around taking photos of great vintage graphics, stopping to play the very coolest looking machines.







This is a game that was created when the Playboy Mansion opened in Chicago. One of the goals of the game was to light up the letters to spell out 'Slick Chick'.







Woo hoo!





Just go ahead and let this last one soak in:



and think about where you went wrong in your life.