BOOM shacka lacka lacka.

I've never been a serious runner. In fact I've never been much of a runner at all. Still am not. So it surprised me today at how frustrated I became after not being able to complete a run because of a knee injury.

About a year ago, after moving back home, I decided to sign up with the website myfavoriterun.com and started logging my run times. The first time I ran I completed about a 20 min. run with an 11:04 minute average. Throughout the past year I've never maintained a consistent running schedule but have used it for stress release and exercise, probably running once every 10 days - 2 weeks on average. I usually run about 2.5 or 3 miles and have cut my pace down to about a 10 minute average, so for 25 or 30 minutes.

A few weeks ago I was running and around the last mile I noticed my right knee started to bother me. I didn't think too much of it, but finished my run in more or less average speed and distance. The next time I ran I did not notice my knee bothering me at all. Two Sundays ago I went orienteering with my family and didn't even think about my knee hurting me again, since I basically had diagnosed it as an isolated incident. Well that was unfortunately not the case. Normally the orienteering routes I do take about 1-1.5 hours to complete and average about 4-8 km in distance. This particular route was an exception though and was more difficult than the routes I normally complete. Coupled by the fact that I got off my map and lost for about 20 minutes did not help anything. My total time logged in at about 2.5 hours. Not a big deal, really, except for the fact that about halfway through my knee started bothering me again. Orienteering is also hardly ever run on flat elevation, so I was running (well jogging) up and down often steep elevation changes while my knee was painfully worsening. By the time the last 45 minutes rolled around I was walking and using an impromptu hiking stick as a crutch. needless to say, I spent the rest of that day RICEing it (Resting, Ice, Compression, and Elevation). Gradually over the past 2 weeks I have been feeling it get better.

Today I decided it was healed enough to have another go. I got about 10 minutes into my run and my knee was hurting me again so much I had to stop. I was surprised when I found myself crying at the frustration and anger I felt that my body wasn't up to a simple 30 minute jog. Part of the reason I know that I hurt my knee in the first place was the fact that the shoes I was wearing were completely worn out and were in fact missing part of the rubber heel because it had worn down and eventually fallen out. The last few times I ran it had been like this. Not good. Today I finally purchased new shoes and was hoping that would solve the problem.

I think I was too optimistic. The new shoes were definitely important for better foot care, but I guess my knee is telling me that it is still too soon. I also signed up to run the turkey trot about 2 days before I went orienteering and seriously hurt it, so now I may not even be able to "trot" the turkey trot, but will be forced to walk. I feel lame and pathetic, but I also try to remember to be thankful I can even walk.

These are my new kicks:



I need to be careful to take care of my body and appreciate the fact that my body is actually working properly and telling me to take it easy because I was not doing something right. In the meantime I think I need to take up cycling.

Caramel & Chocolate Covered Apples!

CARAMEL & CHOCOLATE COVERED APPLES!



I made caramel-chocolate covered apples a few weeks ago, and since I couldn't find too much information about dipping them in chocolate (plenty of caramel-dipping advice!) I decided to post how I made these apples.


Prep time: About 1 hour - 1 1/2 hours
Total time: About 7-8 hours
I ended up making 5 large apples and 4 small apples, so those are the proportions I will use.
You will need:
1. Large, firm, pretty, apples. Good varieties are the ones that are on the tart side. I used Granny Smith.
2. Caramel. You can make your own caramel or cheat and buy a 14 oz. bag of wrapped caramels.
3. Sticks for the candy apple handle. I used popsicle sticks. Smooth chopsticks would work well too.
4. Chocolates. I used about 10 oz. of a bag of Hershey's dark chocolate chips and a few ozs. of vanilla (white) chocolate bars for drizzling.
5. Toppings! Peanuts, Butterfingers, M&M's, toffee, sprinkles, coconut, slivered almonds, crushed pretzels, oreos, etc.


To make:
1. Wash apples with hot water and scrub to help remove any wax. Dry thoroughly and put in freezer for about 20 minutes or the fridge for a few hours to get cool so the caramel coating will stick easier.
2. Remove stems and insert sticks into top centers of apples.
3. Chop toppings and place on plates for decorating.

4. Place parchment paper (supposedly doesn't stick as much as wax) on cookie sheets (enough to hold all your apples) and set aside.
5. Unwrap or make caramel.
6. Heat and melt caramel in medium sauce-pan, microwave, or double boiler. I used the microwave - I simply turned it in full power for about 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between the 30 seconds for about 2 minutes total. For 14 oz. of caramels, I gradually added about 2 Tbs. of milk to help thin the caramel. Too little, and it is hard to stir/coat. Too much, and the caramel does not go on thick enough. (I made the mistake of adding more than the recommended 2 Tbs. and the caramel became too thin - oh well!)
7. Once caramel has been heated so that it is smooth to stir, dip the apples one at a time in the bowl of caramel goodness. Tilt the bowl or use a spoon once the caramel level starts to drop.

*Photo courtesy of pwcooks.com

The above photo is only half done - make sure and coat them all the way to the top, where the stick meets the apple.
8. Place each apple on the parchment paper when you are done dipping it.

9. Once all the apples are coated and on the cookie sheets, place them in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. Now the caramel has cooled some, so I went ahead and transferred the apples to new sheets of paper so that I would not have the caramel ring on the bottom of the apples. You could theoretically scrape this caramel off and reuse it for something else, I just lamely threw mine away.

10. Next stick these pretty apples in the fridge for many hours to cool the caramel completely. I put them in the fridge for about 3-4 hours before moving on to the next step. When I pulled mine out again, the caramel was still a little soft to the touch, but I went ahead with the next step - the chocolate!
11. Well, first line up more parchment paper and cookie sheets.
12. I melted the dark chocolate in the same way in the microwave. About 2 minutes total, in 30 second intervals, stirring in between. I did not end up adding anything to thin out the chocolate since I always seem to make my chocolate seize up when I do this. The melted chocolate chips by themselves turned out to be a perfect thickness once they were properly melted.
13. I did not dip the caramel-covered apples in the chocolate coating, but instead used a spoon to well, spoon, the melted chocolate over the apples. I then used a spatula (or rubber scraper technically) to smooth the chocolate around on the apples. This seemed to work fairly well and the toppings cover up most imperfections. If you are doing a lot of apples, I would recommend keeping the apples you are not ready to dip yet in the fridge as the caramel starts to soften again at room temperature and you do not want the chocolate to melt the caramel or it just makes a mess.
13. Toppings! I held the apples over a larger, empty plate, and took handfuls of the toppings one at a time and simply sprinkled them on top of the apples as I turned them. This worked really well! The toppings that drop on the plate you can simply reuse on the apple you are working on.

14. You can optionally melt and drizzle white chocolate on any of the apples for a really neat look too! I simply melted some white chocolate in a bowl and used a fork to drizzle the chocolate over the apples.
15. Once you are finished topping each apple - place them all on new parchment paper and cookie sheets and stick back in the fridge. Wait a few more hours until the chocolate has hardened and they are done!
15. You can also decorate the sticks by tying a piece of fall-themed ribbon around them or putting a sticker on them - or however else you could think to make them look more festive.

They are so, so delicious and your friends and family will love you for it I promise. :)

In case you're wondering, these sell 3 for 49.95 plus shipping on chocolatecoveredcompany.com.

Habitat Construction

In the midst of looking for a job, I have been trying to stay busy during the day 1) Looking for a job and 2) Staying involved in my community. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go with a friend to work at Habitat for Humanity in West Dayton.
The last time I worked at a Habitat site was in high school, and even then I probably only volunteered half a dozen times. When Gina and I pulled up to the site there were about 5-6 men sitting outside the house on a lunch break. Gina and I kinda exchanged thoughts on how this wasn't exactly what we were anticipating, but we'd give it a try anyway! Upon introducing ourselves, we learned that 1 of the men was a contracted electrician, three were from a volunteer group called 'Catch the Spirit', and 1 of the guys was a habitat employee, Keith, who has been in construction for about 20 years.
We were there in the afternoon from about 12:30-4 and I think Gina and I both had a really great time. I learned several new things about construction.
The first is what is called a 'Crow's foot' marking.
This is kind of lengthy - but it is a very imforative description of what a crow's food mark is:
A crow’s foot is a v-shaped mark that forms a vertex or V-shape. The point of the V designates the point to be marked (whether for a cutting or positioning)



In many circumstances a crow’s foot is better than a single line, because the point of the V marks where you draw a cross-line that intersects the V and divides the wood or other material. If you are simply drawing a straight line initially, you might end up with an intersecting line that is not straight. The crow's foot prevents that by dictating only a single point in which the intersecting line is meant to be drawn through.

I used a construcion 'square' which is a special type of ruler to mark the intersection of the crow's foot for where to cut the piece of wood. The raised lip that you can see in the picture is held flush against one side of the wood while you use the ruler edge to line up where you want to draw your intersecting line through the V of the crow's foot.






I also got to use a power saw to cut about 8 eight pieces of wood. One of the pieces I cut too short. Keith had told me we needed a piece that was 40 3/8". Instead I cut a piece that was 38 3/8". Thankfully Keith is used to working with unskilled laborers, and was very kind about my mistake. I was able to mostly rescue the piece as I needed another piece later that day to be cut at 37 3/8" so I only ended up wasting an inch of the 2x4 through my mistake.

Two other terms that I learned were 'light' and 'heavy' in reference to measurements. Instead of saying 12 inches and 7/16 of an inch, you can say 12 inches and 3/8 of an inch, heavy.

This simply means 12 inches and 3/8 of an inch, plus 1/16 of an inch.

Or in the case of 3/8 of an inch, light, it would be 3/8 of an inch minus 1/6 of an inch, meaning 5/16 of an inch.

By the time I finished nailing (with some assistance) some 2x4's above the stairs (they were being used to form the floor of the attic) - I was able to do a pull-up from one of the boards that I nailed in. It was a test to see if my construction skills had worked - and I passed the test, haha. Thankfully for my safety, too. :)

I always like helping out with Habitat because of the long-lasting impact you have. I like helping to provide food and clothes as well to people - but there is something unique about helping to provide a permanent structure for somebody - an escape from the elements. You know that if you come back to a building site in 50, 60, 70 years - God-willing - that house is still going to be there, and you were a part of making that happen. That is a very good feeling.

Bittersweet...No More Target

And so the end of another era has come for me. Today was my last day working at Target here in Centerville, Ohio. My first day was the mid-beginning ish of November, so more or less making my run at Target a 9-month stay. I definitely never anticipated at the beginning that I would still be here, but there are lots of studies done that reflect my sentiment. Many students moving back home, and many staying there much longer than they ever would have guessed.

My leaving Target is very bittersweet. I won't miss the corporate feel of everything I do - the constant 'go, go, go' and the feeling like I can't even stand still to have a conversation with someone lasting more than 10 seconds because I am not being productive. I understand why I feel this way - Target as a company was not created to improve their employees social lives by encouraging employees to have heartfelt conversations on company time. I understand that. But I still don't like it! I don't like feeling like every day I come into work, I am behind. We can never seem to get caught up with all the work we have to do. There were a few months earlier in this year where we were actually getting 'everything' done more-or-less by the end of the day, and it was a good feeling. But now that back-to-school selling is in full swing, it will be constant again with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, and Easter until around May again of next year.

I won't miss being on my feet for my entire shift - literally not sitting down until my breaks. That is hard work! My body definitely has adjusted since I first started - but I have never enjoyed not being able to sit down during my shift. I realize there are many, many jobs like Target - food service and retail being the two main sectors in which this type of work is very similar - minimum wage for customer service and being on your feet the whole day.

I will miss my coworkers. I have definitely said, and will continue to say, that my coworkers at Target were awesome. I loved getting to joke around with the guys in the backroom - and that is something that I will definitely miss. But this was also a hard thing for me in that I felt like I could never really and truly get to know my coworkers. I wanted to be able to sit down and really talk with them - see what was going on in their lives. What are their stories? Why are they the way they are? Who has influenced them in their lives? What are their passions? These were questions I was never able to ask because of the nature of the job - there is no down time to get into these sorts of discussions, and that was frustrating to me. I love laughing with people and joking around - but I also love really getting to know people; deep conversations. Something that is just not going to happen at a work environment like Target.

While I feel like many jobs are like this - no time for personal conversations - there are also some jobs that seem to lend themselves to this sort of conversation. Jobs where your task does not require much concentration, you are stuck in the same vicinity/talking space as someone else, and it does not interfere with your work. My last job often was like this, at the group home, when the clients would be asleep and I could get to know my coworkers.

Someone at work yesterday asked me what I would do if I could do anything. I said I would like to love people and cook food. I did that at BCS, but at BCS I also felt torn and eventually moved on because I wasn't able to really use my brain very much on the job and I like to be challenged mentally.

At any rate, the plan as of Aug. 4, 2011 is to go visit my brother, hang out a lot with my friends, go to the beach with my family, maybe go visit someone else?, then head to Tennessee for 2 weeks where I will meet up with old friends and get a feel for the area and look for work. It's been a year now since I was living down there, and as many people have mentioned to me - I need to be careful that I am not simply romanticizing my memories of TN. Everything being equal, I would choose living in Chattanooga over Dayton in a heartbeat. But one of the things I have thought about more recently is whether or not I want to live alone. I used to be dead set on the idea - no one else to be accountable to, my way of decorating, my own standard of cleanliness, etc. But I have also been thinking a lot about the benefits of having a roommate. For one, it is cheaper. For two, it means community! I am not sure if my personality is cut out for living alone. This past year has been hard for me - so many things have been so uncertain for so long in my life now that when I think about going through more uncertainty with a new job and new friends and a new life - it scares me to think about doing all that and then not having anyone to talk to about it. Here in Centerville, one of my best friends is looking for a roommate, and I know that it would be an absolute blast living with her. She and I get along great, and I feel like the community that would be present in that house just may rival the community that came out of the house I lived in after I graduated college. Now that was a year! So many great memories of music, laughter, delicious food, friends, community, Jesus, farming - I have fond, amazing memories of that first year post-grad. And when I compare that to living along, somehow it just seems so lacking.

Red and khaki - last time I'm ever wearing that combo! hahah ♥

Chattanooga and Centerville

Since I've been thinking so much about whether to stay here in the Dayton area or to move back to my much loved city of Chattanooga - I did a little research about the statistics in both of the cities.

CENTERVILLE, OH -

Racial makeup:
92.33% White, 2.94% African American, 0.13% Native American, 3.17% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.26% from other races, and 1.10% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.18% of the population.

Median household income:
$54,892

Percentage of population below the poverty line:
4.1%

Percentage of female householder with no husband present:
7.9%

CHATTANOOGA, TN -
Racial makeup:
59.71% White, 36.06% Black, 2.11% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race, 0.29% American Indian, 1.54% Asian, 0.11% Pacific Islander, 1.01% from other races, and 1.30% from two or more races.

Median household income:
$32,006

Percentage of population below the poverty line:
17.9%

Percentage of female householder with no husband present:
17.3%

Needless to say there are some pretty informative differences behind these numbers.

Target Rant = Farming?

I can't say I'm too surprised, but I did think I would be able to hold out a bit longer before getting this frustrated. The wear of corporate structure is really getting to me. I have been working at Target now since the second week of November, so about 10 weeks now.

It is so frustrating leaving the workplace every day thinking, "Ok what did I accomplish today?" and the consistent answer I come back with is, "I helped fuel consumerism." I mean, stores are definitely useful. To be able to have thousands of products available all located within 174,000 square feet (thank you target.com) is remarkable.

But it is such a weird feeling coming away with the ultimate goal of every step I make to "drive productivity." What does that even mean? Why do I even want to help drive productivity? So that the people making the products can leave healthier, happier lives? So that the people driving the products to the store can spend more time at home with their families? So that the 300,000 plus hourly employees that Target employs can finally save enough money to put their sons and daughters through college? OR is so that the someone, some Unknown can add an extra $100,000 to their payroll in 2012?

The system does an outstanding job of committing you to work hard and forget WHY you are working hard. Many jobs - the reason why you are working hard is obvious. Maybe you are in the bread-making business and you want to sell bread so that your family can eat from the profit and so that you can provide your community with delicious, healthy bread. Or as a teacher, ultimately you are working to better student's future lives by providing them with an invaluable education.

I work hard when I am at Target, and so do my coworkers. As one coworker said to me tonight, "What's the point? I come here, work, go home to eat and sleep, and then come back in the next day and do it all over again." What IS the point? Life is way too short to spend going to a job that you hate just to pay the bills so you can have fun for a night before pushing back into the same cycle over again.

Granted, I definitely understand that a lot of people don't have an option one way or the other. With jobs running short, and our way of life dependent upon the life cycle of the traditional working job, many many people are forced to work hourly jobs, standing on their feet all day coming home tired to a family that wants love, food, attention, warmth, and affection.

It's interesting how our society has worked so hard to gain leisure time - away from the farm and the concept of simplicity, growing our own food, and living in community as much as possible. I'll be the first one to admit I love my leisure time - I'm sitting here at 11 p.m. on a weekday typing. When I was working in CA I was in bed every night by 9 p.m. - 9:30 at tops. I valued my sleep time, and every bit of lesiure time was that much more important.

I have a feeling thought, that our society is headed towards an inevitable collapse. At some point, the corporate structure is going to break down and people are going to start working back towards the models that worked for our parents' parents' generations and before. It's already starting to happen. People are demanding to know where products come from, and how the people that were involved in bringing that product to them were treated.

It's a scary process - this reversal. It means temporarily taking people out of the line and assigning them new roles. It means relying on our neighbor - being humble and asking for help when we can't pay the bills. It means helping our brother, our sister, our enemies?! when they are in need. People that once spent their time isolated from their families in factories for 12 hours a day are going to spend their time working alongside their brothers, sister, aunts and uncles planting crops and bringing the harvest in.

Maybe I DO need to start scoping out some land afterall...