martinimade

"I am also an admirer of Sir Lawrence Bragg, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on X-ray crystallography in 1915. Bragg later became president of the Royal Institution of London. He loved the work, but missed gardening, so he took a job as a gardener one day a week at a house in South Kensington. The woman who engaged him had no idea that her gardener was one of the most distinguished scientists in Britain until a friend came for tea one day and, looking out the window, casually asked, 'My dear, why is the Nobel laureate Sir Lawrence Bragg pruning your hedges?'"

-- Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling, which is the new very funny, very cranky book from a funny and cranky man. 

This week's Dry Martini, in which I talk about fascists and the number 15.

• Read this when you are free to laugh out loud. (NB: it may be funniest if you've been pregnant. I suspect it's still pretty damn funny if you haven't.)
• I'm totally ordering one of HRH Lucy.
• Long -- but so, so worth it.
• When Runner's World writers nail an essay, they really nail it.
• Peggy Carter is my spirit animal.
• Huh.
• You will always get Scruffy Hospitality from me.

"Which brings me to the first thing you need to know in order to drive the hell home in the snow: You are not actually required to lose your goddamn mind just because snow is falling. It is not the apocalypse. Neither physics nor society have been cancelled by it. It is not sulfuric ash. There are no abominable snowpeople stalking through it. It will not dissolve your body if it touches you. It is frozen water. You can drive in it, you can walk in it, you can stand in it long enough to help a fellow motorist get the fuck out of your way, you can ball it up and throw it at people who treat it like it's the end of the goddamn world. It is snow."

-- Albert Burneko, "How to Drive in the Snow, In a Regular-Ass Car, Without Freaking Out." Some of you might need this this weekend. My neck of the woods will not, even though we are highly skilled at this snow driving thing and would love to have some snow around. Le sigh.

Embracing my inner troll over at Another Mother Runner.

Related: any suggestions for what I should do while in Austin?

• Women aren't weak.
• Tick that box. (Disclaimer: While I don't know Allison Glock personally, she gave my book Hillbilly Gothic a blurb that made me cry because she so fully got what I was going for.)
• While I know that all of the graffiti was a symptom of a city falling apart, I still miss it.
• Deadly. And gorgeous.
• This is how toxic Flint's water is.
• No judgement at the gym. 
• Bodies are interesting.

Once again, I took to the mike for Another Mother Runner. This time, SBS and I talked to Kristin Porter from Iowa Girl Eats about running, gluten free diets, and treadmills. There was also talk of knitted knockers. As one does.

"Maybe that’s Peak Bowie: The moment when he fell to your orbit and showed you your past, your present, and your future, all at once. Like Bowie himself, your life’s definition changes from one day to the next. And nothing you experience will ever change you in quite the same way."

-- from Brian Raftery's essay on David Bowie, which comes the closest to capturing what I've been feeling this week. To be honest, I had no idea how important it was to me to know that Bowie was in the world and I find myself surprisingly sad that he isn't anymore. I do know, however, that his death models the best way to face the inevitable. 

• What happens to your brain when you have a baby.
• Getting biology back on our side.
• WORD.
• Next time you think it's too tough to head out for a run....
• Words can only begin to express how much I want to do this.
• Vonnegut on what it takes to be a writer.
• TV show or just an average night at their house?
• Superheroes. 
• snerk.
• Maybe the head of VW should stop talking to the press.

For those who wanted to listen to my sermon from a few weeks back, the podcast is now online.  And thanks for all of the kind words about it!

This might be my favorite picture from the weekend:

To quote my husband: The Steelers/Cincinnati game wasn't so much a football game as a bar fight. He's not wrong. For more, read this.

This is my second picture from the weekend:

The perfectly captures how I wanted to spend Saturday and Sunday. It is not, however, how I spent them. Curse you, adulthood!

Ah, well. And now we dive into the week.