Dianna, my former Wesleyan officemate, runs her second marathon tomorrow. I will be frantically sewing up my knitting project, so I won’t be able to be there in person, but I’ll try to send umbrella-like thoughts to hang out over her head for the race. (And, Di, these will be big golf-sized umbrellas, not measly little umbrellas like I normally carry around.)

And I would be remiss if I didn’t offer good luck wishes, too, to her Running Chick pals, April-Anne and Michelle, who’ll be joining her for a slog through the rain. I don’t know you guys personally, but you make Di’s world a better one, so thanks and good luck tomorrow!

Di, you remain an inspiration to me (and probably many others who’d rather hang out inside where it’s comfortable):

If I want to change the reflection
I see in the mirror each morn,
You mean that it’s just my election,
To vote for a chance to be reborn.

Thanks for getting up off the couch and out the door on a regular basis, proving that it is all a matter of putting your mind to it. I’m not crazy enough to want to run foot races, but I definitely think of you when I’m out on the bike or Dance, Dance, Revolutioning in the living room.

Kick some butt tomorrow morning. I’ll be rooting for you to come up with a new personal best and to finish in the time you’re hoping for — and to cross the finish line with a smile.

My trip has screwed up my internal clock, but it really is Thursday today. Without further ado, we present Three Beautiful Things from the last week:

1. While walking back to the hotel Monday morning, I passed a local coffeehouse where I decided to get a cup of tea. They seemed like they had a promising lunch menu, so I returned on Tuesday for my midday meal and had the most amazing sandwich. It was cheddar, gouda, tomato, and lettuce on blueberry cornbread. Divine.

2. I like hats, probably because I look good in them (a trait I inherited from my mother). While in England, I bought a bright green courderoy newsboy cap that I’ve worn on several occasions since I returned. And people really seem to like it. And me in it.

3. My confidence is beginning to wane in my ability to finish my knitting project by Monday afternoon. But my friends seem to believe I will pull it off, perhaps because I have pulled off a number of large projects as deadlines loomed. I appreciate their faith in me, because it’s really all I’m working off of at this point.

I spent last night knitting until 3:30 in the morning when I discovered I hadn’t packed the right quantity of yarn in the color I needed to finish a section. I’m home with the stash now and will be knitting until I have to leave for Meetup. I will then go back to knitting once I get home again.

And tomorrow — at lunch and after I get home? You guessed it — I’ll be knitting.

Friday on the car ride up to Connecticut? Knitting (at least when I’m not driving).

Sense a trend yet?

My (semi-self-imposed) deadline is Monday. But my time becomes severely curtailed come Sunday.

So keep your fingers crossed for me. I can’t knit cross-fingered, so I need all the help I can get.

I have landed safely once again in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, the area of town near the college campuses of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon.

Today’s focus group went extraordinarily well and we’re very pleased to have connected with this Healthy Start Pittsburgh, as both the participants and the providers in the program seem to be excellent people — very willing to share their opinions and offer constructive feedback.

I’m a little nervous about the focus group tomorrow. I will be running it by myself and have had an email that indicates that this group might not be as excited about our project as today’s group. But I will practice the listening skills learned in hotline training (“What I hear you saying is …”) and be open to comments — and hopefully everything will be fine. (But I wouldn’t object if anyone wanted to cross their fingers for me, anyway.)

On a non-work note, Pittsburgh is an interesting city and I’m beginning to understand some of the neighborhoods a bit better on my second trip to the area. I managed to find the grocery store this morning, as well as an independent coffee house (where I hope to grab some lunch tomorrow, since they have outdoor seating), a cozy-looking used bookstore (around from the a coffee house), and a pub where I had dinner (the waitress was vegetarian and helpfully pointed me to a portobello and cheese sandwich that was monstrous!). Tomorrow I plan to hit a museum in the morning before returning to the hotel in the afternoon to prep for the focus group. I figure I need to do some exploration of this city if I’m going to be here at least once more before this project ends.

The most amazing person elected in the last year.

He will one day be president. And I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that.

I told the Bangladeshi man at the restaurant that this man was the future of the party, the presidency, and the country when we were discussing politics with him in London. He wasn’t aware of him, but I bet he’ll check him out and be impressed. I know I was when I first heard him speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

(Thanks to Erik for passing the link along.)

No post yesterday. I was running around like a madwoman all day trying to get uncooperative pages to magically turn into pamphlets to take with me to focus groups in Pittsburgh this coming week.

Today marks the first day civil unions are legal in Connecticut. Congratulations to all those who are becoming legally united after prolonged periods of waiting. I wish you the best (and when I say best, I mean that I hope eventually that stupid politicians get off their butts and realize that their relationships are no more or less valid than yours and that your relationship, therefore, deserves equal protection under the law, not just different protection, which is what they have offered you now, as you well know).

Today is also our friend Mike’s birthday. I do not have Mike’s email address, or I would say this to him in an e-card. But as I don’t, his wife Shelley (who sometimes reads this blog) will just have to pass along our best wishes for a jam-filled, headache-free birthday weekend.

My plans for today center around relaxing. I have failed the first step — sleeping in. I don’t guarantee that I won’t return to bed, but that’s not really the same thing.

• I will shop — both at the Crafty Bastards arts and crafts fair up the road, where I hope to buy some Christmas presents, and at a grocery store, where I hope in exchange for some money they will give me something to outfit my larder. It’s been looking a bit Mother Hubbardish since we returned from England.
• I will walk. DC’s cultural office is offering a number of cool-sounding historical tours today that sound like they could be fun and informative. If I weren’t sick and in the middle of a frantic crafts project and between two plane flights, I might be adventurous and explore a neighborhood not my own, but as it stands, I think I’ll pick one of the offerings that stays nearby (Georgetown, Embassy Row, Eleanor Roosevelt’s DC life…).
• I will knit. I will knit a lot. This cold/flu/whatever has severely hampered my progress at a critical time. I still harbor delusions of finishing in time for next week’s deadline (thoughts enabled by knitting and non-knitting friends who have seen me beat innumerable deadlines in the past in just the nick of time), but I am rapidly running out of days (and people seem not to understand that I should knit instead of work this week).
• I will watch baseball. It is the final weekend of the regular season, and, while my team is out of contention (although they did admirably well and will end the season with a better-than-.500 record for the first time in a couple of years), Rudi’s team is not. The Sox and the Yankees face off to determine the supremacy of the AL East and whether they can continue to thumb their noses at each other in the post-season. If the Sox lose, I won’t take it personally. I grew up in Connecticut and have no disagreements with the Yankees, except when they play the Mets.

I think that sounds like a busy day, so I’m not going to do anything else (or, at least, plan to do anything else). Posting may be a bit haphazard this week, as I’ll have to do it at Kinko’s in Pittsburgh…