Team in Training

In case you hadn't heard, I'm currently training for a triathlon that will take place on April 4, 2011.  I'm participating in Team in Training with the Luekemia & Lymphoma Society, and it has been a great experience so far.  My teammates are high-energy, positive people who make training in soggy, dark, wet conditions way more fun!  You can help the LLS improve patient care and fund research by throwing a few bucks at my fundraising page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/wa/lavatri11/eadamsbcrb Thanks!  I have a standing offer of a dozen chocolate cherry almond oatmeal cookies for anyone who donates $50 or more.

You Know When the Kitchen Is Gone

For my first trick, I've stolen the name of my first blog post! Thanks Cheryl!  She and I both recently read You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon, and my kitchen was partially destroyed by a ruptured pipe in during the intense but short-lived Snowpocalypse 2011.  That happened last Wednesday (the night before Thanksgiving), and today the contractors came and took out about 85% of our kitchen cabinets and cutting a 2-foot high section out of one of the walls in our living room.  Our landlords have said that it will be roughly 4-6 weeks before we have new cabinets, "but you can help pick them out!" 

You Know When the Men Are Gone is a collection of linked short stories about living at Fort Hood, Texas, primarily focused on the wives of soldiers living on post while their husbands are deployed in Iraq.  I read the whole book in a day and thoroughly enjoyed it.  In a way it reminds me of Sherman Alexie's book The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, providing a window into a community and experience through linked short stories, where some characters turn up in more than one story.  A few are set in Iraq, but they deal primarily with the soldiers' relationships with those they've left behind and why the transition back to civilian life can be so difficult.