Restaurants Lizmonster wants to try this year:

Octopus Bar (East Atlanta)
Colonnade (Cheshire Bridge)
JCT Kitchen (West Midtown)
Holeman & Finch (South Buckhead)
El Taco Veloz (Sandy Springs)
Miller Union (West Midtown)

Partly inspired by Anthony Bourdain's visit, of course.

Major Cities Lizmonster visited this year

Philadelphia (x4)
Washington, DC (x2)
Palm Beach (x2)
Portland
Montreal, Canada
Chicago
San Diego
New Delhi (India)
Agra (India)

Concerts Lizmonster attended this year:

Lucy Kaplansky
The Decemberists
The Indigo Girls
Freezepop (Dragon*Con)
Weird Al

Lizmonster has arrived in India! Jynx's family has been most welcoming in every way, and have really made her feel at home. She hasn't seen much of Delhi yet but is very excited to go on a tour of the old city tomorrow.

British Airways was really a capital choice in travel for this trip. No peanuts served, and the in-flight meals were actually pretty good. The best part was that Lizmonster and Jynx got Exit Row seats from Atlanta to London and from London to New Delhi, meaning they were never cramped in next to and behind strangers. Lizmonster thinks this has supremely added to her good health and spirits so far.

The first thing that Lizmonster noticed when she stepped out of the airport was the way the air feels. It's heavier and dirtier than anywhere she has ever been, like Los Angeles on steroids. In fact it reminds her most of the last night of Las Fallas in Valencia, when hundreds of sculptures are burning and ash falls on the whole city. New Delhi is not burning, though. Her chest hurt a little to breathe at first until she got in the car. Since then, she has gotten used to it.

And the traffic never stops. Trucks, auto-rickshaws, scooters, cars... everyone is honking all the time and vehicles go both ways on one-way streets. And there are English translations under various signs, although it's unclear how far English would get Lizmonster outside the comfort of Jynx's cousin M's house.

Lizmonster and Jynx arrived at Jynx's M's residence about 3:30 a.m. but didn't go to sleep until after 5 a.m. since they all stayed up talking and eating toast with cheese. And they have an adorable dog.

The main event of today was getting dressed; the afternoon went by in a fashion montage. In fact, Lizmonster could almost hear the song "I'm Gonna Be A Supermodel" from Clueless with a Punjabi beat playing as she tried on 10 different beautiful traditional tops, all of which fit very well. She will borrow some from Jynx's cousin M for some of the dinners that will take place this week, and for the sangeet and mehndi events. For the wedding itself, though, she wanted to get an outfit she could keep. Jynx's aunt A took Lizmonster and Jynx's sister Augustana to get fitted at a sari shop she has been going to for 30 years. Lizmonster sampled beautiful fabrics before choosing a light blue color and beaded netting for a lehenga. Augustana took home several sari and lehenga options to decide on later.

Meanwhile Jynx is getting pants fixed and the status of his suit is still up in the air.

Outside the sari shop there were dozens of vendors selling costume jewelry, shoes and fruit. The air was especially thick here, and for the first time since the airport Lizmonster felt a little light-headed, but the feeling soon went away. A bought Lizmonster some blue bangles to go with the dress, and a bag of bangles for all of the ladies that were being sold for under a dollar on the street.

Generally the food has been better (and different) than Indian restaurants in the USA. Lizmonster found out today that she loves buttered chicken and that mint-yoghurt sauce. She also likes basil-yoghurt tea and mango juice and red carrots sprinkled with mango powder.

Jynx's family in New Friends Colony has covered their house in white Christmas lights, making it very festive for the upcoming parties.

Time for sleep now!

Lizmonster must have had a very busy summer and fall -- it's been more than more than four months since she's checked in!

There's been so much lovely travel this year: Portland, Montreal, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Diego, and three weeks she's off to New Delhi.

And lots of fun things happening in Georgia, too. Jynx and Lizmonster saw spectacular fall leaves at Amicalola Falls State Park earlier this month.

She continues to run when she can. Saturday she ran the Race2Recycle 5K in 29:15. That's a speed of 9:24 per mile.

If you had said to Lizmonster 5 years ago, "Do you want to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on 4th of July to run 6.2 miles for the low price of $40?" she would have grumbled something like "Is this a joke?" and gone back to sleep.

But after four summers of seeing Independence Day revelers cheering on the runners of the Peachtree Road Race, Lizmonster decided it was time for her to join this quintessentially Atlanta tradition. And it wasn't just any tradition. It was the reason her street, Peachtree St. was blocked to cars from Lenox Mall all the way to 8th St. It was the reason 60,000 people signed up to run instead of drive 10 kilometers, and thousands more came out onto the sidewalks that few Atlantans ever traverse normally.

The night before she composed this letter on Facebook:

Dear Atlanta,

After three years of living on Peachtree, chasing after buses on Peachtree, riding buses on Peachtree, riding MARTA under Peachtree, and riding in other people's cars on Peachtree, it is time for me to exert my independence by getting from Lenox Mall to the park to my apartment all by myself, on foot, as fast as I can, with 60,000 other people running with me.

Let's hope I make it.

Love,
Liz

In the morning, with Emmy waiting downstairs with a Starbucks coffee, Lizmonster barely had enough time to shower, dress and eat cereal. Leaving her phone at home was a bit disconcerting; at least the girls and Emmy's boyfriend had each other as MARTA buddies. There's probably no event that draws more people to ride MARTA; Lizmonster wondered why this race isn't just a fundraiser for the ailing public transportation system that she relies on so heavily.

It took some navigational know-how to find where wave G started, since Peachtree itself was blocked off due to the race and construction, but Lizmonster and friends found the other 8 a.m. runners shortly before the start near Phipps Plaza. As Lizmonster crossed the start line, she vowed to keep a steady pace and see how long she could coincide with Emmy. But before long, Lizmonster's shoelace came undone, right around the same time that Emmy was weaving herself in between runners so that she could get ahead. Within two minutes she was gone, but Lizmonster felt a true sense of camaraderie anyway even among all these people she didn't know.

In front of McDonald's Braslava and her daughters waved to Lizmonster. At Moe's, a child tossed a t-shirt to Lizmonster that she used to wipe the sweat off her face and neck for the rest of the race. Down the hill toward Lindbergh, Lizmonster wondered if Elton John was looking down from his high-rise apartment. Mr Varasano was handing out his restaurant's pizza beyond Peachtree Battle. Lots of businesses had tables full of paper cups full of water that Lizmonster both drank and dumped on herself to cool off. Somewhere in there was a person in a chicken costume, multiple DJs and other musical acts. As the church bells rang across from the Temple, something magical was surely in the air. It was freedom, and the beauty of the outdoors, and a sense of real-life community that is so rare in the age of the internet.

Admittedly she didn't run the whole way up the hills, but she never walked for more than a minute or two at a time, even when her right foot started to burn with blisters. Still, she was shocked when she read a clock near 26th St that said 8:45. Wasn't it lot later? So, she pressed on. And when she got to Piedmont and made the left-hand turn toward the finish line, she bolted. As she neared the final clock she was confused at first; it said 1:35 -- maybe she did walk more than she thought. But then it clicked: The whole race had begun at 7:30, but Lizmonster hadn't started until 8:00, so that meant it was now only 9:05!

Indeed, Lizmonster's time was 1:04:51. She picked up her XS t-shirt and then the stomach cramps set in, but a bottle of water quickly relieved her of pain. She used her last bit of energy to climb the 8th St hill back to her apartment and run toward Jynx when she saw him outside her apartment. After a shower, she fell asleep for a glorious 2 hours. Jynx reports that Lizmonster began her nap by smiling, and then her mouth formed more of an "o" shape as she purred short breaths.

Lizmonster finished the Peachtree Road Race in 1:04:51!

Running down Peachtree St. without cars and without regard for traffic signals is indeed liberating.

Lizmonster's Hobbies

It's a common theme among Lizmonster's friends that they wish they had the ability to function normally on 2 to 3 hours of sleep so that there would be more time in the day for activities.

But Lizmonster is one of those people that needs 6 hours to feel pretty good, 7 hours to feel better and 8 hours to live up to the adjective "perky." She tries to manage her time effectively so that there is opportunity for both organized hobbies and general leisure, but in order to get that much sleep, there have to be trade-offs.

Running used to be one of Lizmonster's main hobbies this year, but with her knee injury from earlier this month she's been taking it easy. It seems like her knee/shin problem is generally better, and she has gone running without a problem, but does act up every now and then. And it's in the 90s every day in Atlanta, so running outside is far less desirable than it used to be. Lizmonster hopes to do a lot of swimming this summer.

The Southern Transplants, her two-person music group, has now spent two 3.5 hour sessions recording three original songs by Lizmonster. It has been a rewarding effort, but her singer friend Kolumbia is going to architecture school soon, so there may be less opportunity to practice, and Lizmonster hasn't written any songs since February.

Lizmonster's semester of Hebrew classes ended last month but Lizmosnter isn't sure she's retained much meaningful knowledge from the classes. Worse yet, she doesn't really have a Hebrew conversation buddy to even see to what extent she could converse.

Now Mondays are kickball nights. It's turning out to be a lot less athletic and a lot more social than she thought. She enjoyed going to Smith Olde Bar on Monday night after a very short game that ended 4-1.

At the moment, Lizmonster's most challenging hobby is something she's hardly ever done before: improv comedy. She and Jynx are participating in IMPROV! The Musical, a completely improvised musical comedy show for which she feels rather unprepared. Fortunately, everyone wants practice, so Lizmonster has high hopes that this will be a great chance to think fast and perform.

Five Years Since Graduation

Lizmonster has never considered herself an athlete, nor has she ever gotten a serious sports injury. But now that her knee hurts, she is keenly aware of the fragility of the human body.

Last week in Princeton, on a beautiful Friday morning, she set out on the same enchanted path she had traversed as an undergraduate five years earlier and started jogging, with Lake Carnegie on one side and the canal on the other. She passed the little white bridge where there's always a few men fishing, and past the Harrison St. bridge crossing. She might have gotten all the way to Kingston like she did that one time in 2007, but instead turned around and started back toward the campus, in a combination of jogging and running. She estimates that she ran about 2.5 miles and walk about 2.5 miles that morning total.

Her left knee and shin have not been the same since. She was most aware of it while dancing at the 20th reunion tent with her fellow band alumni to songs like "8-6-7-5-309," wanting desperately to keep jumping up and down with them during "You Give Love a Bad Name," but having to sit down because of the pain.

After a week of not running, she tried the treadmill on Saturday, but couldn't get past one mile. It's not a sharp pain per se, but rather a dull ache and stiffness that's imprisoned her poor joints, and it's the worst when her foot is slamming down on the belt or pavement.

To the Internet she turned for answers, only to discover that her options are (a) deal with it and rehabilitate herself or (b) have surgery, which she hopes she doesn't need.

We all want a quick fix to our physical problems, but as we age things take more time to fix. This is a very hard lesson for Lizmonster to accept. It's one of those annoyances that reminds her that 27 is physically different than 18, and that she's technically moving past her prime every day.

And it makes her so angry to think that maybe she won't ever be able to run the same again, just when she had completed the Warrior Dash and considered entering more 5Ks. With a lot of patience, hopefully she can run again, and hopefully kickball won't be too strenuous for her next week.

But there is something more insulting about this injury than perhaps any other she has ever had before. It is a marker of age, of use, of time passing that Lizmonster cannot control. How is it already June of 2011? Lizmonster used to be someone who wanted to continue in school as far as she could possibly go and feel like she was moving upwards in every aspect of her life. But it's been one long summer since 2008, a rocking back and forth on a metaphorical wicker chair and there's no sign of a next season on the horizon. And it feels comfortable on the chair, but what happens when it rains? Worse yet, what happens when everyone else walks by and leaves Lizmonster behind, but she doesn't even notice? Or what if Lizmonster suddenly feels like standing up and doing something else, but she's too old and her knees hurt too much?

Atlanta is Lizmonster's first experiment in being an adult and having a home that doesn't change. It's still both comforting and terrifying.