I Run These Towns

Memorial Day is the traditional start of summer. Normal people are barbequing and heading to the pool. In my typical crazy life fashion we spent Memorial Day weekend moving into our new house. I had several people ask me why I'd choose to move over a holiday weekend. All I saw was three uninterrupted days of unpacking and organizing. Is there a better way to spend a long weekend? My parents came up to help with the move, and they arrived on Thursday evening. The movers came on Friday, and they were insanely efficient. I could not have loved them more. One of them also happened to be from West Virginia. I don't think that was a coincidence. Mountaineers climb higher after all (literally three floors in this case.) After getting everything moved from one house to the other we spent Friday evening relaxing (and drinking...let's be honest).  Right during the middle of moving weekend I thought it would be a great idea to run a 5k. On Saturday morning we walked (yes walked!!)...

I know many women who love and identify with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's notorious quote: "Well-behaved women seldom make history."  I find behaving well to be entirely overrated. It's always a challenge as a professional woman to walk the right line. You don't want to be too much of a bulldog because then you're seen as a bitch. But you can't be too nice or you'll be a pushover. I've decided that my style in lobbying and in life is to just be myself. Fortunately my natural personality is brash, candid and somewhat (mostly?) poorly behaved. Somehow I think it works. My frankness is either how I've been successful, or it's going to get me in trouble one of these days. It's probably some sort of combination of the two. Life is too short not to say what you think. Sometimes candor needs to be tempered, but I'd like to think that people appreciate knowing where someone is coming from even if they don't like the direction. I'm n...

I love Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities . The first line is apropos to advocating for communities in Michigan: " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." I'm often asked if it's hard to represent so many different communities in Michigan. They are all different, and that's what makes them great. Kalamazoo is completely different from Traverse City, and yet there are similarities that make all of our communities a family. Last week I spent time in two of my favorite Michigan communities, and they could not be more different. I flew to Marquette on Thursday for a Friday presentation. I was in Marquette in January and was completely swept off my feet. I fell in love with its downtown, sweeping lakefront views and was even charmed by the winter cold. When I was asked to come back for a presentation I didn't even look at my calendar before saying yes. This trip was a little diffe...

Sinclair Lewis declared Main Street to the climax of civilization. This is one of my all-time favorite quotes, and it is the reason why I am so excited to be moving downtown. It's taking a lot of energy, a lot of time, and it's all so worth it. At the end of last week we closed on our new house - our dream house in Downtown Lansing. I'll be honest - I'm exhausted, and the fun is just getting started. Last Saturday I did my first "brick" of triathlon training - I biked an hour and ran for 15 minutes. I was warned about how my legs would feel after the bike, but nothing could've prepared me. They felt like Jello, and the first few minutes of my run felt like I was running under water.  Later that day we took possession of our fabulous new house, and we spent the afternoon taking multiple full car loads of stuff. I love books (we have hundreds of them), and there are built in bookshelves in our finished attic. It seemed like a great idea to trudge up two ...

I'm completely amazed that tanning salons still exist. Not only are they generally located in some godforsaken strip mall entrenched in suburban sprawl, but tanning is just disgusting. If you are a fan of going to the tanning bed and this offends you, good. I hope this is as offensive as possible. You should be thinking about how horrible it is for you. It causes cancer, it causes wrinkles, and it makes you smell like burning flesh. Still think it's a good idea? I used to go to the tanning bed a few times before prom in high school. All the cool kids were doing it. I begged my mom to let me, and I'd go lie in that UV ray death chamber for 20-30 minutes. Everybody likes the way they look when they're tan, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I never wore sunscreen as a kid. As a matter of fact I loved to load up on some Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil and get as tan as possible. I spent all day every day at the pool in the summers. It never occurred to me that ther...

We've established that a lot of my leisure travel in Michigan happens in Southeast Michigan. My husband is from Metro Detroit, and we generally head east. The beauty of my job, however, is that I get to do lots of traveling. As a result I have discovered the gem that is Kalamazoo. It's inching in on Marquette as my current Michigan city love interest. I've been to Kalamazoo several times in the last month or so. At the end of March I attended Populus, a cool placemaking event hosted by Kalamazoo based economic development consulting group Southwest Michigan First .   Then earlier this past week I headed to Kalamazoo for a reception and some networking. I had registered for the Kalamazoo Half Marathon months ago before 1) I knew I'd be spending so much work time in Kalamazoo and 2) before I knew we were buying a new house in our free time. I have to admit I wasn't super psyched to head back to Kalamazoo twice in the same week. My stress level has been off the c...

I love a good challenge. After years of playing with the idea of doing a triathlon, I registered for one back in February. I immediately joined the YMCA and started swimming a few days a week to start getting used to it. This week officially starts my triathlon training, and I have to admit that I'm not looking forward to it. Here's the thing - I don't dig the swimming. As a matter of fact I find it extremely inconvenient. Running is easy - I get up, throw on running clothes and shoes, and I'm out the door. Swimming is a process. I get up, drive to the Y, change, swim, change again, drive home. It's a whole thing. I don't mind the actual swimming once I'm there, but it's merely bearable not enjoyable. I know the cross training is good for me. My running times this spring have been really great. I just love running, and it's really all I want to do. I'm forcing myself to push through in order to cross the swim days off the list. I'm sur...