Title is a reference to South Park… I definitely feel like I am General Disarray… or at least my life is in general disarray right now. When 2024 started, I was thinking “I’m going to stop living in limbo so much. We’ve been in this house for 6 years. I should unpack the boxes in my office and finally buy the standing desk I want! Maybe we’ll hang some pictures on the walls. We’ll replace the couch and redo the front yard landscaping… it’s gonna be great.” And shortly after that, it all started to fall to pieces. School My daughter’s school was supposed to expand to have 7th grade next year ..read more

I heard a story on the news a while ago about how they are changing the female crash test dummy for the first time in over 60 years so it, you know… represents women. The industry claimed it had a female crash test dummy for a while, but not only was testing with it not required, but the dummy was a far cry from the average female size. At just 4 feet 8 inches and 105 pounds, it was more the size of a child or a tween.  I’ve heard plenty of stories about a male bias in any kind of human biology studies too. Mainly because “a woman’s body changes over a month, it’s too hard to study when t ..read more

This review is a long time coming… I wanted to really give the iLive Waterproof Truly Wireless Earbuds a solid test after I was sent these headphones, but the first hurdle in getting this posted is the battery lasted a really long time. (I mean, is that really an issue to complain about?) The battery lasted so long that it took me a couple of months before it drained and needed to be charged so I could test that. But before we get to the charging, let’s talk pairing… I tried to pair these to my iPhone and it worked. They display a bluetooth name of several numbers/characters, so it’s one of t ..read more

For as long as I’ve been running I’ve always kept track of my yearly running mileage. If it didn’t surpass 1000 miles in the least, I felt less than accomplished. After a few years, I operated under the approach that it had to be at least 1200 miles in a year, so I averaged at least 100 miles a month.  But sometimes, life deals you some blows and you can’t reach those same levels. For me, it was a thyroid cancer diagnosis and a few surgeries. I just haven’t bounced back to the same level yet. I was getting super frustrated that my running mileage was lower than usual this year. Digging in ..read more

Do you ever feel like you are just drowning? No matter what, you can’t keep your head above water? Physically, I just feel kind of crummy all the time. I’m dizzy the majority of the time. I don’t have the time or patience to visit every kind of possible doctor to try to figure out what is wrong with me or if this is just my new post-thyroid cancer normal. It sucks if it is… I’m supposed to schedule a mammogram because I’m old like that. I have a colonoscopy scheduled because I’m old like that. I probably need a vision check, or I can diagnose myself that my vision has changed because I’m old l ..read more

This year I have read both Kara Goucher’s and Des Linden’s books and each of them had a moment in their career where they were kind of “left in the dust” as people started to run in shoes that contained a carbon fiber plate. AKA “super shoes”.  This technology isn’t super new at this point. Most major shoe brands have now released running shoes with carbon fiber plates. But I haven’t had my hands (or feet) on (in) them until recently.  Are carbon fiber plates truly an amazing feat of engineering that will turn everyone into an amazing runner? Well… some of that statement may be true ..read more

I was sent 4 packets of The Right Stuff to test. Not to be confused with gels, these are electrolyte concentrate fluids to be ADDED TO WATER. Trust me, you’re most likely not going to want to drink these straight out of the packet. We’ll get to that… I love the buzz on the packaging that these are NASA Developed. I mean, I definitely operate my daily life choices by asking myself “Is this what an astronaut would do?” Kidding aside, these were created because apparently astronauts come back to Earth and suffer from severe dehydration once they’re back in our gravity. Space is so interesting an ..read more

The school year wrapped up for my kiddo recently. While we normally try to take a vacation each summer, we realized that our typical vacation time this year is already blocked off by a family reunion. And a family reunion is NOT a vacation, it’s an obligation. It can be a fun obligation, but it’s definitely about a lot of other people’s schedules more than our little family of 3. So we started to look for a quick getaway option. Our first reaction was to look at Disneyland, but it’s really hard to just go to Disney these days. You need reservations way in advance now! And a joke about how it w ..read more

Kuru Footwear shared this playlist of songs for running recently. It’s over 6 hours long and covers many decades. I remember one time I downloaded a running playlist recommended in a magazine and all the songs on it were catchy, but when listening while running it sure didn’t feel motivating. I can’t remember the whole thing but I remember the second song was Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5, followed by SOS by Rihanna. Good songs, but when you’re running in the heat of Vegas they were reminders of my discomfort in the moment! Got a favorite song? Whether it’s running or not, feel free to share ..read more

Mornings suck… I used to get up super early so I could run before I had to get my kid ready and start working by 7:00 AM. (I usually start working at 6:30 AM, because I suck at work/life balance.) But since my total thyroidectomy… mornings suck. For most of my life, I have woken just before my alarm, watched the time tick over, and then would quickly turn it off. I don’t hit snooze… ever. Never in my whole life have I been a snooze person. But now my alarm actually wakes me up each day. And even though I use this super peaceful piano song as my alarm, it startles me awake because I am always ..read more