Dana Burland

Man alive, was the Universe off tilt last week or what? As if the chaos and destruction elsewhere wasn’t enough, we’re struggling locally with flooding. Flooding of epic proportions. These photos are from downtown where the flooding is particularly (18ft above normal) bad, though it’s bad/worse in other areas, too. We were under a state of emergency for a few days, told to stay away from the river and use water conservatively. I live far enough away from the river to not have had to deal with any of this at the apartment. Our little backyard pond swelled a bit but by and large is back to normal now. Let’s just hope we can say the same about the water levels downtown soon. Before & After: The sidewalk in the foreground leads to the public museum which is inches away from water. [Click to enlarge] Before & After: Different views of the same bridge, almost underwater Before & After: The usual walkway along the water is gone. Those are semi-circle office ...

This is how a typical weekend dinner comes together in my apartment: SITUATION 1: Maybe we’ll go out to eat. I. But I have no idea what I'm in the mood for. Let’s scrap it, we have food here. II. But the wait at that place is over an hour. Forget it, we have food here. A. That thing on their menu though? It sounded so good . Let’s make it. SITUATION 2: I’m tired of sports. Let’s watch Food Network. I. THAT. Right there. Let’s make THAT. RIGHT NOW. We had a code red 1A and 2I this past weekend. I’d been waiting to go to Amore , a swanky Italian place outside of town, but the wait was deemed unwaitable. No one was more bummed about that than Ben, who had already fallen into food heaven with a smoked blue cheese and pancetta cream pasta dish he read on their menu. So, we decided to make it. He wanted to look up a recipe; I wanted to wing it. This is a common theme in our relationship, as evident by such situations as building Ikea furniture and getting lost in Northern Mi...

Oh so thankfully, all my Runner’s World coworkers and other friends I knew running The Boston Marathon this year are physically ok. So many other people aren’t—and for that there are no words, especially words that I’m capable of writing. Monday night I sat on the couch and refreshed my coworker’s Twitter streams over and over again. I didn’t want to read or hear anything else; I just wanted to know everyone was ok. I didn’t want to weigh in with anything Boston related. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t really have anything to say, and it seemed like the rest of the world was saying enough already. I thought reaching out to my friends and old coworkers might contribute to the chaos they were already going through—maybe it did, but I did it anyway. When extreme good and extreme bad happen—big, small, world-effecting or personal in nature—there’s often a bandwagon jumping effect. People want to be a part of it somehow. No single blood cell or square inch of tissue in my body w...

Ben was out of town for work this week. I don’t love when he leaves for all the usual cheesy, romantical reasons you’d expect. Lucky for me, he doesn’t travel very often. Doubly lucky for me, I know how to live it up in his absence. Sorry, B, but some marathons of Say Yes to The Dress  fun is just for ladies. 1 | A visit, fine and maybe a feeding, with Gymnast Squirrel. 2  | Distracting myself from the torture that is foam rolling. The muscular fury from my stretchy band is only slightly better. I wasn't kidding about that Say Yes to The Dress marathon, by the way. 3  | Oops, I fell into the Gap. 4 | Ice cream and reading. Of the Michigan Dear Traxx (vanilla ice cream, mini peanut butter cups and fudge swirls) and Caitlin Moran "How to Be a Woman" variety.

On a random weekend back in my stuffed animal collecting days, I decided to build said animals a condo. It would go in the six inches of empty space between the end of the organizing unit in my closet and the closet wall. Naturally, that was a much better space for a stuffed animal high-rise than for my rarely-used viola. Several dismantled shoe boxes, some Barbie furniture, an unused blanket and a LOT of Scotch Tape later, construction on the condo was complete. Unfortunately due to the uselessness of Scotch Tape in such a situation a freak natural disaster, the condo was soon dismantled. Thankfully, no Care Bears were injured in the accident. I put my old amateur architectural skills to good use again this past week at work. Some aches and pains in my hammies meant mama needed to switch up her work style. Time to take a stand. My new standing work station is certainly not pretty; but thanks to a couple U.S. Postal Service boxes, some phone books and a little ingenuity, I’m clo...

I think my coworker put it best when she said—" I can’t wait to not have to run so I can start loving running again." I don’t love running right now either, Emily. I’m blistered, I’m (perma) sore and I’m tired. So. Very. Tired. It’s with all that in mind that I, a traditionally loyal follower of training plans, have decided to scrap mine. Well, not scrap it but maybe bend it a bit, and cut a few paper dolls out of it. For the next five weeks I’m making my training plan my guide, not my Bible. It’s my goal to do as much as I can of each day’s assignment, but in the event I can’t, I have a bike with fully pumped tires and a horrific workout from a trainer at my gym that can supplement all sorts of additional hurt. Hurt of the good variety, of course. I know I’ll get to the starting line of the 25K, but I want to be happy and healthy at the finish line, too.

And just like that, the madness is over. After two weeks of competition, #2 seed ArtPrize has been named in the Grand Rapids Magazine “GRacket” as Grand Rapids’ claim to fame. The GRacket campaign ran daily on the Grand Rapids Magazine Facebook page for the last two weeks. Each morning, I’d post the winner of the tourney/poll from the day before, and put up the new poll. We decided to give each poll 24-hours worth of voting time to allow folks who aren’t online during the day to participate. Click to enlarge One of my biggest concerns leading the campaign was holding fan attention through the two week GRacket process. Luckily, that wasn’t an issue. The daily Facebook polls (which allowed fans to choose the winner in each match up) garnered ten times the amount of responses our pre-GRacket polls received, proving that if fans wern't playing along with their own GRackets, they were at least interested in the match-ups. Due to the nature of the tournament, not many ‘teams’...