Lifting Weights at Midnight

Clumsy but ambitious, with vegan recipes, health tips, and tales of mountain bike and hiking trails. I’m not a quitter, I just fall down a lot.

Review: Purity Body Wash’s All Natural Daily Exfoliating Scrub

Posted on February 7, 2016 at 2:32 AM in Lifting Weights at Midnight, Professional Writing Samples

Living in a camper is really living the dream. A dirty, filthy dream. We do have a shower—that is, when we have water, which isn’t all that often. The shower itself is basically a bucket with a hose. I’m being a bit dramatic here, because there isn’t a much better feeling than, after no way to bathe for a week or two besides baby wipes and dry shampoo, standing in a plastic basin with water spraying into your chest and rinsing it all away into a drain. It took until Arizona to fix our plumbing issues, and we now have both running water and a working shower, but the water is fairly limited, compared to a house shower, and the hot not cold water lasts for only three minutes.

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The Joy in Harder Things

Posted on February 3, 2016 at 2:24 AM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

Evan and I camped out in the parking lot of McDowell Mountain Cycles, a bike shop in Fountain Hills, Arizona that’s co-owned by one of our former coworkers from The Bike Shop That Shall Not Be Named, back in Pittsburgh.

Another Positive Interaction With my Mountain Bike

Posted on December 14, 2015 at 2:23 AM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

Since all my bellyaching after riding the Jay Hoggs trails at Georgetown Lake (okay, maybe it was the all the bean tacos I’ve been eating), I redeemed myself to my bike and again feel worthy of owning such a complex yet simple machine. Evan and I nursed our egos with a short, spry 15 mile road ride around the farm towns just East of Austin.

We Ride With Susan

Posted on October 24, 2015 at 11:37 PM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

All things considered, I want to live. The pain my loved ones would endure is palpable enough for me to never want to die; although I have no fear of death, the love I have for my family—and, possibly more importantly, that they have for me—gives me a firm sense of self-preservation. While I do have a nagging sense of invincibility (despite having never stepped into oncoming traffic, there have been plenty of other close calls), I know eventually my family and friends will have the option to attend a memorial service of some sort in honor of yours truly. Hopefully not for a very, very long time. Hopefully my parents aren’t here to scatter my ashes.

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Fighting the Good Fight

Posted on September 16, 2015 at 8:08 PM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

I skipped boxing last night because there has been a lot of stress in my little family and I thought it would be nice to take a night off from obligations and just ride around the park in the woods at night with my husband. I’m glad I did it, but when I got caught behind a slow truck on my way to boxing this afternoon and knew I was about to be late, I had to fight myself from turning around. I forced myself to keep driving, and when I got to the gym four minutes late, I made myself walk in with my tail between my legs and wrap my hands. Coach Jeff is as kind (to his students anyway) as they come, while still being directive and authoritative. We talk band stuff, because he used to be in the popular PA band Simon Says who played the college circuit in the 90’s. I missed the jumprope warm-up but caught all the important lessons, and then finished with the jumprope at the end. To skip it is to only cheat myself. I deserve it to myself to put in the effort and make the most of my time. We all deserve it.

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Newfoundland/East Coast Trail, Vol. 1

Posted on August 26, 2015 at 3:50 PM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

Yes, I know I have more stories to tell about Race Across the West, but this has been a very eventful summer and the stories are happening faster than I can write them. Last week I returned from hiking a good portion of the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland, Canada. The heroes of St. John’s, for me, are Alison and Geoff, who let me sleep in their guest quarters and leave my things while I was hiking, Bernadette at the tourism department who worked so hard to make our trip memorable and to keep us on track, and Carolyn Cook (there were many Carolyn’s), who worked for the tourism department and also at the Outfitters shop in downtown St. John’s.

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RIP Canondale: ridden too hard, put away too wet

Posted on July 12, 2015 at 10:57 PM in Lifting Weights at Midnight

After working the support crew for Team PHenomenal Hope‘s endlessly impressive duo Ann-Marie Alderson and Patty George as they competed in Race Across the West (RAW), I was inspired to finally start riding my road bike again. Road riding in southwestern PA is certainly different than riding in Southwest US, because the hills are much smaller and punchier, the shoulders are much narrower (or nonexistent), and the road surface varies between relatively paved to hunks of asphalt that have been thrown in a general area together to create a relative illusion of the concept of “road.” Still, watching them pedal, climb, and descend, and feeling their small victories at having crossed mile markers and personal struggles, made me want to go out for a long ride myself. A week or so home and I was finally settled to hit the pavement (the trails are still too muddy to ride, as it’s been raining almost every day for a couple months now). I went to the basement, and found a wonderful science experiment where I though I had left my bike.

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REVIEW: Yurbuds Inspire 300 Earbuds (for tiny ears)

Posted on May 17, 2015 at 11:23 PM in Lifting Weights at Midnight, Professional Writing Samples

I have a medical condition that causes my earbuds to fall apart. Sometimes the speaker detaches from itself, sometimes the chords get all chewed up and I get tiny electric shocks when I run slower than five miles an hour, and sometimes they disintegrate entirely, never to be seen again (or maybe found a couple of months later in a bag I stopped using or tucked in a couch cushion). In truth, I just usually buy crappy headphones that are made for standing at a bus stop or wearing while doing data entry.

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