Me and the US of A....

Stuff I love about USA (in random order):

• how nice, helpful and service minded people are.
• italian sausage on pizza.
• hell - italian sausage on ANYTHING!!
• shopping ... stuff is so CHEAP! (If you see the economy going up in october, that was me).
• the absolutely stunning beauty of New England
• how you can order anything at a restaurant (like, if you want your burger without a bun or with two buns, or with whipped cream ... anything goes, I think!)
• the style of houses - be it the pretty wooden houses or the amazing glass towers.
• the diversity of the culture, and how everybody knows where their family is descended from.
• breakfast. You gotta love pancakes with syrup and all the eggs ... and oh, the wonder of breakfast sausages!!
• starbucks. Because they serve proper coffee ;)

Stuff I wonder about USA (also in random order):

• why they serve dark brown water and call it coffee?
• why you have to pay tips - why don't they just pay people a proper wage?
• the sizes of helpings in restaurants. No way I could ever eat that much. And I have the appetite of a lumberjack.
• why so many people that claim to be christian bitch so much because they have to chip in when people of no financial means get ill...
• when the otherwise nice lady at the diner goes into a rant about the stupid mexicans and the lazy black folks Ö
• why an advanced country has to put chlorine in their drinking water, even out of the big city (yuck - smells nasty and tastes bad!)
• no rugbrød ... that IS a major error!
• why people riding bikes all have their seats placed so low. It looks really funny, but must be quite uncomfortable?
• breakfast. I'd get HUGELY FAT if I had that kind of delish stuff available all the time!

On running and the shape of running shirts

I've taken up running again - again.

After I ran into (pun intended) an injury shortly after my first and so far only half marathon a couple of years ago, I've tried starting up several times, but never with much luck.

Recently, I decided to give it a shot and started up very gently. I found a beginners program, looked at it and immediately jumped to week 4 (there's gotta be a limit to HOW gently you can start up!).

Now I am almost done with week 7, and it is going really well! When I started running last winter, I never got out of the very short street I live on, before I felt the existence of my right back thigh. This time, I haven't felt it once (and I know my thigh is there ;).

So I am happily running along, and to encourage myself, I've purchased a bit of running gear - a couple of extra of the below-knee tights I fancy, and a slightly used (2 or 3 times) Nike running jacket that used to belong to my neighbor. We had a big yard sale recently, and this guy owns a sporting good store, so I thought I'd rummage through his stuff :)

I love the jacket! It's really nice (was expensive to begin with, I think) and I am sure it will be in every single wash for the rest of the long sleeve season.

Thing is, my neighbor is a guy.

I've tried buying running gear for women. The tights are okay, but jackets and shirts just don't fit me. I am not petite, but not grossly fat, but I have broad shoulders, and women just aren't supposed to be made like that.
So a men's size small or medium fits me way better than any women's size. The men's shirts are long enough, wide enough in the shoulders and chest, and they don't flap in all the wrong places. I've learned, but now I am stuck with all the freebies I got at women's races I've been to.

I guess I just don't have a typical feminine body shape. Nevertheless, I've lived 45 years and never had anyone run screaming out of a room when I entered. I've even managed getting married and having kids :-)

So perhaps it's not as bad as all that.