thoughts on new years

we were given unexpectedly warm weather for christmas this year while we were in utah. it was foggy the first several days we were there but on christmas day, the sun was shinning and it was, relatively, warm (perfect weather for running trails in the mountains!). the day after christmas it snowed though so i at least got my fix of seeing snow fall from the sky in winter. i am back in austin now and there is unseasonably warm weather here as well. i am not complaining a bit.

i have been contemplating new years resolutions or using new years as an excuse to start doing something i've been contemplating for awhile now. i'm considering participating in project 333. i'm not exactly a clothes horse, but the idea is to make myself more aware of what i wear and how i wear it...again. when i spent a couple months in tanzania in college, we were limited to what we could fit in our backpack for two months. by the end of my time there i had become very creative with how i wore my clothing and realized that less really can be more. i definitely have more clothing now than i could easily fit into a backpack, but many of these things i don't wear on a regular basis.

picking a wardrobe that will take me through the next few months is an appealing challenge. as a graduate student, i don't have to dress up for work everyday and living in texas, i don't need a lot in terms of cold weather clothing. however, the next few months will likely involve job interviews and traveling to climates very unlike where i live now...and my wardrobe would have to account for this. so, i am going through everything and seeing what i think will and won't be possible. i definitely think the project is doable, but having some time to visualize is nice!

cookies!

a few specimens from the seasons first batch of Christmas cookies! they were hit at the thankschristmas celebration today. i don't know what these cookies would be called by most people but in my family they were called victoria cookies. victoria lived just down the street from my grandmother and great-grandmother. when i was very little, we only got these special cookies when we went to visit. my mom eventually asked victoria for her secret recipe. i have many fond memories of being a cookie quality inspector as my mom made them at our house.

on a completely unrelated note, watch out for people hacking into your facebook account! i deactivated my months ago and haven't done anything with it, but i returned home from thankschristmas dinner to find an email informing me that my account had been reactivated. eric checked and sure enough he could see my account again, so it wasn't just spam. scary!

last day of classes

today was the last day of classes for my last fall semester in school. that's kind of weird. not sad. just weird. i feel fortunate that the professor for who i am ta-ing this semester does not need me to help proctor the final. my schedule next week will be filled with nothing but research and i am excited for that.

eric and i finally gave up trying to look for cities where we both might be able to find something to do. we realized that we needed to just apply everywhere, including areas where there are opportunities for us both, and then to wait and see if and where we got offers. this week i sent off one faculty, two postdoc and three job applications. there are a couple more postdocs i want to apply for and i'm keeping my eyes open for the right faculty positions.

i am really excited for the holidays this year. i follow a number of minimalist blogs and many of the writers have been reflecting on holiday traditions and how tradition and time spent with family and friends is what makes the holidays what they are...not the hustle and bustle and need to shop for things people do not need. i definitely find myself slowing down and looking forward to the post-semester relaxation period. tomorrow eric and i will be joining friends for a ThanksChristmas celebration with a friend who had to work over thanksgiving. happy start of the holiday season and end of fall semester everyone!

family bonding

eric and i did the warrior dash yesterday morning. it was a ~3 mile run with obstacles. we ran on trails and up streams. we jumped/climbed over cars and walls. we crawled across and up cargo nets, jumped over fire and, as you might be able to tell from the picture, crawled through some mud. it was a lot of fun but over before we knew it! our clothes, however, are still recovering. they've been through the wash twice already and are still crusty...yikes!

all sort of settled with my phd. my committee approved the changes and i've made good progress on the work i proposed to do instead. i think i need to focus on writing statements of research and teaching interests now though so i can at least apply for a couple faculty positions. i've been reflecting more and more on what i should do next and am starting to come to grips with this whole moving into the real world business.

my knee has started to feel better too. i am thinking though that i will need to be cross training a lot in preparation for this race in february. regular longer practices of yoga have been helping too. i'm fortunate that eric puts up with me doing headstands in the living room and does not feel the need to knock me over everytime. its funny how greater practice makes your weaknesses become more apparent even as you are improving. i think this is the case in many aspects of life and maybe is what keeps us striving to always be better.

dissertation update!

it appears that my committee has approved the new direction of my dissertation without having to have another full blown meeting. solving the 5-body problem is tough (i.e. getting all 5 committee members in the same room at the same time) and i'm glad i get to put off doing it for another 6 months...at which point though, i should be defending my dissertation. the end is in sight but there is a lot to do between now and then.

i am really looking forward to thanksgiving next week. its been in the 40s here early in the morning when i go running and the leaves have changed to slightly more yellow, orange and red hues. so mentally, i think its starting to set it that its time the holidays. that and after next week we have one full week of class and then its finals...as i'm not taking finals anymore, i am "off" for winter break from 12/4 until sometime in late january, at which point i'm hoping to have most of my dissertation research done.

there's a possibility i will be spending a few weeks in europe next summer. the international society of biomechanics conference is being help held in brussels and a week later the dynamic walking conference is happening in jena, germany. keep your fingers crossed that funding works out for everything!

football

i have been enjoying doing observations with middle and high schoolers. they seem to be excited about everything and simply getting to compete...that and they will proudly display their bruise, cut, scar, staph infection, etc for you so you get to see and/or hear about a lot of different injuries, ailments, etc. eric forwarded me this video from a middle school football game. don't worry though. there are no injuries!

direction

my part of my life got some new direction yesterday. the device i had been working on with the mechanical engineering machine shop is almost done. the design and components are finally complete, but we're waiting for new parts to come in and tweaking some of the code used to control it. this is after over a year of waiting for it to be done. while its great that its finally done, its a tad too late for me to use it to do that part of my originally proposed dissertation and still graduate...so we scrapped 2 of the 3 aims i proposed for my dissertation.

i am now working on a revised dissertation proposal which i have to send around to my committee this week for their approval...and hopefully they do in fact approve it! its weird though to all of a sudden be doing something completely different from what i had been planning to do for a couple years now. at the very least, i am excited to be moving forward again as opposed to waiting on other people to get things done so that i can do what i need to do.

trail shoes

i just got an email informing that because of my place this weekend, i'd be getting a new pair of salomon trail running shoes. i thought it was only for the overall overall winners, but apparently they're giving it to the overall male and female finishers. what a cool surprise...especially given that my shoes are completely worn out!

cactus rose 50

cactus rose 50 was this past weekend. eric and i finally got out of town around 2p on friday and drove to bandera. we arrived at the park just in time for the race briefing. after the briefing, we found a place to set up our tent near the starting line. with a 5a start, i knew that driving to the race from home the day of wasn't going to be an option so i had started looking for places in the area. most places turned out to be dude ranches and the like, charging $150 or more per person per night. i'm a grad student. that price was also not an option. in the small print at the top of the accomodations page on the race website it said you could camp at the start/finish for $5. i like camping and decided to just go for that, figuring that we'd be some of the only people out there. wrong. the field at the start/finish was well populated by people in tents, campers and rvs on friday night. i love that other people also find camping followed by a day or more of continuous running to be a fabulous idea.

it was 34 degrees when we woke up saturday morning. my sleeping bag kept me nice and toasty but stepping out of it was rough. my alarm went off at 4a. i think i started getting out of bed at 4:15a. eric, awesome husband and crew that he is, boiled water so i could have oatmeal for breakfast while i sat in a warm car trying to pack my backpack for the day. a little hurried, but that was fine. i started the race in a polar fleece hat, gloves, running tights on over my tri shorts, an underarmour short sleeve shirt, my quik-dri boston marathon long sleeve shirt and my marmot rain jacket...and i was not warm. it was many hours before any of this started to come off.

about 7 miles into the race, i tripped over something and face planted. its dark. we're running with headlamps so this is to be expected. i picked myself up and ran it off, glad that i was wearing so many layers of clothing, thus preventing my skin from getting torn up. several miles later though i noticed my right knee hurting a bit. i don't have knee problems, so this was cause for concern. at this point, i knew that i would be on cruise control for the rest of the race. about 20 miles into the first loop, the course started to get hilly and the downhills, aside from being brutally technical, were making my knee get more and more uncomfortable. i finished the first loop (25 miles) stripped off a layer or two and headed back out.

this course was run "washing machine"-style. this means that it was a loop course with the first loop run in one direction, the second loop run in the opposite direction, the third loop in the first direction, etc. thus, miles 18 to 34 of my 50 miler contained the hills. i got to the first aid station on my second loop and stopped for aid. my knee froze up while standing there getting food. i knew that this next leg would make or break my race. i started away from the aid station and all of a sudden, my knee froze up completely. i was in tears i was in so much discomfort. not good. i knew though that movement made it loosen up. i stood at the start of the trail fidgeting for a minute or two trying to loosen my knee back up. i took a couple tender steps and as soon as i got a couple relatively pain-free consecutive steps, i decided it was time to get moving. i'm not a fan of giving up...that and technically, i had only 20 more miles to go and about 29 hours in which to do them...and i was second female overall at the turnaround.

i would march in place at the next aid stations so that my knee didn't freeze up again. it actually started to feel a lot better, in part i think because i just kept running. the temperature was slowly getting higher too. eric said the highest temperature he saw for the day on the car console was 81 degrees. it definitely felt hotter than that out on the trails. i was drinking water and miso soup (740 mg of sodium per serving!) and eating bananas (potassium) like crazy all day.

i finished with a smile on my face and a much happier knee in ~11:45. the picture above is of me about 25m before the finish line. i didn't set any speed records, but i was happy with how i managed my speed and how i was still running quickly in the last section. the heat (and dry air) more than anything seemed to take it out of me on the last segment. i didn't feel like my legs got fatigued the same way they did at headlands. its a different course, yes, but i also wonder if my body is just adapting. i did finish second place female overall in the end too. i'm not sure where i was in relation to the woman who finished first, but hopefully the official results will be up soon.

eric was a rockstar all weekend. he was spoon feeding me oatmeal for breakfast while i was frantically packing my bag before the race. the course led us into one aid station twice per loop and he had miso soup warmed and ready for me all four times i passed through as well as at the half way point. he had all my drop bags picked up and camp taken down by the time i finished so we could drive home after the race (he drove the whole way). and that's only the half of it. its great to have someone there supporting you even when you're lost in your own world of racing and can't seem to express enough appreciation.

recovery is going well so far. i'm not as still as normal. i wonder if in part that is because of backing off the pace. the goal this week is recovery, recovery, recovery. i think the plan is to attempt rocky raccoon 100 in february next...with bandera 100k as the last long run one month before. i'm debating that 100k though.

i don't know what is up with school at the moment. things move forward and then they stall. my device, which we thought was basically done is now not. my advisor threatened (the person who works at the machine shop) today that if it wasn't done in a week that we had to do something else. i look at that and think, please, don't mess with me like that--not doing this extra data collection would make MY life so much easier. it would be fantastic not to do it! my advisor also thought that getting this new software would make everyone's life easier...well, i'm the only one who has used it before and i'm the only one who would use that software who also knows how to code. it turns out that all the code we got from our collaborators (which my advisor thought we could just magically use) has to all be changed to do what we do in our lab...which means going through code line by line to change things. ah details. on the plus side, i think the revisions to one of my manuscripts are going in soon, which means hopefully i will have another paper being published soon. i am definitely understanding why people finishing their phds are so eager to just get done!

first day of school?

i started my athletic training observation hours this morning. i had been told previously to look professional when i showed up and that khaki pants, a collared shirt (the kind with only 3 buttons) and running shoes were appropriate. when i got there though people were dressed in gym shorts and tshirts...go figure. the head trainer told me there were other full-time trainers at ut who had done an entry-level master's program so i have resources i can talk to about their experiences.

basically all i am allowed to do is watch unless i am asked if i want to help and even then i'm not allowed to do much. towards the end of my time this morning one of the students in the program said apologetically that we could go stand by the sideline with the water bottles and watch practice. she said it was the boring part of what they do. i was kind of surprised by that comment actually. i "watch" how people move for a living and with this i get to stand outside AND watch how people move AND look for things specifically related to potential for injury AND the people i'm watching are elite athletes. i feel that this is anything BUT boring although i'm sure that there are "boring" moments at times.

just a few days left until cactus rose. in true last minute fashion, i need to figure out what food i want at my aid stations and prepare everything for saturday. you forget how much you rely on food at aid stations until you're faced with being responsible for all of your own aid. hummus on corn tortillas and homemade energy bars, here i come.

we are camping on friday night before the race. we just got our new tent last weekend and set it up on sunday in our living room. lots of mesh on the sides, which seems like it will be awesome for star gazing while still keeping out critters. i'm super excited to go camping. its been way too long!

existential crisis? or just trying to figure out what to do...

i called my brothers earlier this week just to say hi because i hadn't talked to them in awhile. one asked what was going and i told him about generally be stressed trying to figure out what to do with my life. as i started looking for more faculty positions, i started realizing that the ones i found most interesting were in departments that had physical therapy and/or athletic training programs. its great to realize where you interests lie, but it stops you in your tracks realizing that a couple more years of school might be the best option. you see, these programs follow standard curricula which are dictated by the governing boards of their profession. in order for a school to keep its accreditation, it is required to have a certain number of phd-level researchers who are also clinically certified. while i might be able to do research, the lack of clinical credentials poses a problem because i can't count towards accreditation for the programs.

one of the options i had been considering anyway for post school pursuits was to get athletic training certification. there are a handful of entry-level master's programs in the country, but one happens to be at hawaii. one of the admissions criteria for the program is 200 volunteer hours with athletic trainers. part of the reason for having this requirement is to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into before you commit the 2 years of time and money to pursuing said certification. so volunteering i am. i am participating in the directed observation program sponsored by the undergraduate athletic training program at ut. the next two weeks i'll get to observe the trainers working with soccer for a few hours. then i'll spend 2 weeks with the men's track team and then the last 2 weeks of the semester with the women's track team. i'm also starting to work with the high school that's just down the street from my house. next tuesday i start at a football tournament for middle schoolers. i won't be able to treat or work with athletes through any of this, just observe. however, i am hoping that the volunteer hours will give me a better sense of what athletic training is about (from the caretaker end as oppose to the care-receiving end which i have been on in the past) and whether or not i want to/should pursue the certification. sports medicine, particularly running and running-related injuries, is what sparked the interest that got me to where i currently am, so i anticipate this being a fun (although at times exhausting, i'm sure) experience.

the device i need for the last section of my dissertation is functional. we have to replace a couple parts so they can handle higher voltages and today i'll be working on getting the camera system to collect data that the device is outputting. i am amazed one has to become an electrical, mechanical and computer engineer of sorts to get one's phd in biomedical engineering. interdisciplinary research is great.

only one week to go until cactus rose 50-miler. the weather is still pretty warm here, but it looks like bandera is supposed to have cooler nights next weekend. this is a good thing because we're camping the night before the race. i'm excited to test the new tent! tapering is going well. i'm getting antsy to move and have noticed that i'm moving faster and feel smoother on my training runs. this is a good sign. one more week and i'll be ready to race.

dissertating

simple words of a mentor can stop you in your tracks sometimes and make you see the world or yourself through a different lens. i had the opportunity to speak at the biomedical engineering society meeting last friday. the professor for whom i am ta-ing this semester and who is the former head of our department came to listen. he came over to sit near me before my talk and handed me a piece of paper. it was a job posting for a tenure-track faculty position in biomedical engineering (bme). he told me that he thought i should apply, that he had just talked to the head of the department at that university who said that they were looking for people like me.

the vote of confidence in my abilities stopped me in my tracks. eric and i have been trying to figure out what we're doing when we graduate. we've been looking at schools and cities where we are both interested in living. i have been keeping my eyes peeled for postdocs and was considering getting a clinical certification. i had not even thought to look at faculty positions assuming that i wouldn't have enough experience to be considered for anything. my mentor opened my eyes. i have since found another faculty position in mechanical engineering for which i would like to apply as well.

i don't know that any of these will work out, but the possibilities have changed my attitude about the job search and writing my dissertation. i have to prepare statements of research and teaching interests and while these are not long essays (1 - 2 pages each), they are giving me an opportunity to reflect on what scientific questions i want to be asking and what my teaching philosophy is. as i have written thoughts down i have discovered that i have definite interests i want to pursue and definite opinions about how to teach. i have also found myself more enthused than ever to write. i have drafts of almost two chapters of my dissertation written. i still have to collect more data, but i am ready for that.

two and a half weeks left before two faculty applications will be submitted and before cactus rose 50-miler. life is exciting!

fall

the weather cooled off rapidly here in texas. my fingers have gotten cold enough during my morning and runs and commuting to work that sometimes i don't seem to have fine motor control. i'm not sure that that's necessarily healthy, but it is a rather amusing reminder of the fun (seriously, not sarcastically) that comes with fall. a few weeks ago we decided that we needed to throw a great pumpkin party complete with a viewing of the cartoon, hot apple cider and whatever other yummy fall treats we could come up with. we still need to figure out a date though.

as to halloween, my costume this year must be capable of withstanding 25-50 miles of continuous running. cactus rose 50 begins on the morning of october 30th. there are prizes for costumes, but you have to wear your costume for at least 25 miles (one loop of the course) to be considered. the gears in my head have been turning.

i have been struggling internally lately trying to figure out what to do when i'm done with my phd. the degree itself trains you to be a researcher, to ask questions, to find answers to questions and to disseminate that knowledge to the public. there is part of me that now wants to just apply the knowledge i have gained--to work with patients, to spend more time talking to clinicians as opposed to being holed up in the ivory tower. i have been contacting clinicians and coaches about volunteering with them. i am talking to someone who does more health education related research this week. i have been trouble finding postdocs in areas that i am most interested in, but it seems like a postdoc will be important for finding faculty positions. phd training also teaches you to be your own boss in a way, so maybe i simply need to have more confidence in going after the answers to the questions that most interest me.

i am getting more of a taste of teaching lately too--i found out this morning i will be giving a 45 minute lecture tomorrow afternoon about stability when standing and walking in the class i'm ta-ing. in 2 weeks, i will be giving the whole hour and 15 minute lecture. i am hoping that this class is offered again next semester as i would love to be involved with it again and i have to ta next semester again anyway...

the question i keep coming back to in my life lately is how can i do this or that? how can i get out of my books, off my computer and into the great out-of-doors to be involved...with the community, with people? how can i use what i know to help improve lives?

lockdown

eric and i are fine. i ran to campus this morning, right past the library and about 15 or 20 minutes later the school started sending out messages about the armed gunman. eric wasn't on campus at all at that point. i had to hang out in the bme building for a little bit, but otherwise, we were far from any action. though the reason for the day off was very unfortunate, it was still welcome.

the splash and dash was today. it turns out that my body remembers how to run faster than ultra pace. i enjoyed it immensely.

fall is finally arriving here in texas. it has been basically cool enough to leave the ac off. last night we slept with all the windows open and it was fantastic. its the little things in life.

pizza, finances and yoga

we tested out our new pizza stone last night. i think the water i used to make the crust was a little too hot, but the end result still looked and tasted okay! i also made my own energy bars last week so that i didn't have to take gels with me on my long training runs this weekend. i know that gels work, but i just wanted to put real food into me. that's tricky when you're going on a 4-5+ hour run though because a lot can go wrong with your stomach. i will spare you pictures of my energy bars because they aren't particulary beautiful but they taste like banana bread with walnuts (and are vegan!)--yum! i'm going to experiment with adding chocoloate and peanut butter chips next week.

i finished reading "your money or your life" by joe dominguez and vicki robin. its about finances and rather than telling you to make a budget you won't keep, they focus on teaching you how to be more aware of what you're spending your money on and why you're doing it. at the end, they have a really beginners guide to "safe" investing. i definitely recommend the book, particularly because of how it causes you to reflect on what you're doing, what you want to do and how it helps develope a financial plan to make it happen.

i've started reading "light on yoga" by bks iyengar. i started doing yoga when i was in high school and in the last couple years have settled into a more regular practice. i'm practicing on my own now, but want to keep learning so i decided to actually read a book on yoga. iyengar seems like a great place to start.

baking bread, second addition

i was baking again this evening. we didn't buy bread at the store on saturday as i said i would attempt to bake bread for us. part of the reason for doing this was simply to see if there were enough hours in the day to bake bread and get everything else done. it turns out that the answer is yes...one just has to overcome the inertia and fear that it won't work (the bread won't rise! it will taste weird! it takes too much time to knead!). it does. try it. the above photo is honey wheat bread. we have yet to try it as a sandwich but it looks promising.

beautiful flowers and bread

this is one of the pictures i took of our hibiscus before the massive storm we had two weeks ago. the storm caused a bit of stress and a lot of the leaves of the plant turned yellow and fell off. we haven't watered it for awhile to let the soil dry out. its blooming up a storm again but the leaves have not yet all grown back. i love the fuchsia and orange together.

i have been experimenting with bread again. this time i tried no-knead bread. it takes a fraction of the amount of yeast a regular loaf of bread takes and you have to let it rise for 18 hours before folding it over and letting it rise some more. the result is impressive. its very light and chewy. i think i went a bit overboard with the "liberally flour"-ing of the working surfaces, but hey, its a learning process.

this weekend was the first of two major mileage weekends of training for cactus rose 50 miler. friday i did a 4 hr run before work and yesterday i was out for 5 hours. i was pretty tired when i started out yesterday, but the last hour of my run ended up being on one of my favorite trails. it looked completely different this time though as the storm i mentioned earlier caused so much flooding, and subsequent damage. the trail is quite a bit wider now than it used to be and many of the trees that lined it were knocked down and carried away by the "stream" (which also carried a couple suvs away apparently during said storm). i might not be seeing as many spiders or snakes on those trails in the near future!

ants!

we found a few ants in our apartment on saturday. sunday morning we found even more and sunday afternoon (despite killing a bunch and moping the floor in the morning) when we arrived home from church there were even more. so we went shopping. ant traps and environmentally friendly ant killer (lemongrass anyone?) later, we had significantly fewer ants in our house. there were more this morning but they seemed to be feasting on the ant traps so i am curious to see what is there when i get home.

i am a fan of digital sabbaticals. i did one again this weekend and seem to have had more time to do everything--play outside, run, meditate, read a book, watch a movie, write thank you notes, try new recipes and most importantly, spend time with eric. saturday night we watched return of the jedi thus completing my star wars education and last night we discovered that uncooked spaghetti squash is resistant to cutting, even with very sharp knives. we don't know where we'll end up next year, but its fun to keep tossing out ideas and pondering them for a few days (or a few hours) to see if there's anything in which both of us are interested.

35 minutes

its been raining in austin all week due to the hurricane. there has been lots of flooding and some very high water levels. apparently a couple suvs got picked up and taken down stream in the "creek" i run along most mornings. fortunately this morning was clear so i biked to work again. it took 35 minutes including having to back track a little bit when i discovered that a bit of bike path i normally take for 0.25 miles was covered in thick mud (i was on a road bike). while i might be getting a little faster just getting used to the commute, i also seem to be confirming that it is in fact faster to ride my bike 8 miles or so to campus than it is to drive. traffic is that bad here. i love bike lanes.

mid-way through my run this morning (prior to the commute) i crested a rather large hill and ran into a bunch of the austinites who ran leadville this year. i believe they run repeats on the big hills in my neighborhood once or twice a week, and one of the women who didn't finish leadville signed herself up for another 100 miler that's happening in a couple weeks. i'm already on the email list for next years group. training starts october 2. for the next 11 months and 3 weeks, be prepared to hear a lot about running...

and food...i am loving having a kitchen of my own that is stocked with things i actually eat. last night i found a great recipe for rice and beans that was easily modified (i didn't exactly have all the ingredients but substitutions worked out well), tasty, required one pot, was quick to make and yielded leftovers for lunch today for both eric and i. there is something immensely satisfying to me about being able to make things from scratch particularly when i can do it during the week when i don't have all day to commit to the endeavor.

happy cycling, running and eating everyone!

digital vacation

i tried an experiment this weekend. saturday and sunday my little laptop sat closed and unused on the coffee table and then on the desk. i went on a four hour run on saturday. eric met me for 45 minutes or so towards the end. then we went to the farmers market. i baked a loaf of bread. i finished reading my book. we bought groceries...and discovered that we need to track our spending for a month to find out where our money goes. we watched the empire strikes back (i think...it was star wars v anyway...). on sunday after church we visited a friend in the hospital. then we cooked dinner and had our friend chase and melinda for dinner and games.

i was digitally disconnected the whole time. and you know, it was kind of nice to be freed from checking email so frequently and constantly looking up things online. i actually used my cookbooks to find recipes to make and simply made mental notes of things i wanted to look up. it was amazing how much more present i felt. i think i may be trying this experiment again.

when i did check my email again i found a nice surprise. another manuscript i had submitted a month ago was found acceptable for publication pending a few minor changes. that was a fast turn around! i have another one almost half way finished as well, so hopefully that one will be submitted soon.

its pouring here and getting a little cooler. perfect weather for wanting to stay inside and write!

stillness and movement

'Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still and still moving - this is everything!'
~Do Hyun Choe

this morning i was running on the trails in the dark (with a headlamp). i was reflecting on all of the spiderwebs i was destroying and how if spiders have their webs destroyed too many times, they die of starvation...and that's when a snake fell out of a tree right next to me. it landed on the ground and slithered quickly across the trail away from the light. it took a bit for my heart to be still after that but i was definitely able to keep moving. peace is returning to my life despite everything that's going on around me. i woke up a few minutes after 5a this morning and felt rested and just lied in bed until my alarm went off at 5:30a. i have been trying to ease my body into waking up early again and evidently something seems to be working.

i have begun reflecting more lately on what i want to do when i'm done with my phd. i've been realizing that the theme that seems to be running through my life (literally and figuratively) has to do with well being as a whole person. how can people recover after injuries? what can we do to prevent illness and injury? how does one find (and treat) the problem and not just the symptoms? how can positive thinking help? how can diet help? how can good old fashioned exercise help? how does obesity affect one's ability to move? i feel like i can't get information into my head fast enough and i'm excited to see where all of this information takes me and my career. i'm thinking that i might want to do a post-doc in something very different, though complimentary to, what i do now.

and i am beginning to wonder if there's some way to combine all my different interests. i realize that it may not happen immediately, but that idea of health is intertwined, at least in my head, with environmental health. maybe that's because of spending so many years in environmental engineering and oceanography, but i still spend quite a bit of time reading nature writing. i really enjoy rachel carson's work. she was WAY ahead of her time in seeing the link between environmental and human health, particularly with regards to cancer.

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."
~Rachel Carson

on being young

i'm officially young now. eric and i spent some time at the social security office this morning. apparently someone there is very smart and figured out that blaring the news in the waiting area is not a good way to keep people calm and happy. instead they played music that made you feel like you should be looking at fish in an aquarium. hm...wait a second. it was nice actually. we didn't have to wait too long either. i wasn't charged. i just got a plain piece of white paper saying that my name had been changed and that i would get my new identity, i mean social security card, in a couple weeks. now i have to go about the tedious business of changing my name with everyone i know and start getting used to being at the end of the role call.

i got to swim for the first time in an embarrassingly long time this morning. i met up with michelle and a few others at the quarry before the sun came up. the first loop i swam was in the dark, which was particularly interesting because i have dark-tinted goggles. i stayed with someone else who knew where she was going. the next two loops i picked up the pace a little and swam by myself. apparently i have come along way in my fear of open water swimming in freshwater. it was dark outside, the water was dark, my goggles were dark and yet i wasn't really bothered by it. this is good! i swam about 2500m and then called it day. because i haven't swam in awhile i expect that the workout was long enough to make my arms sore tomorrow. we'll see. either way, swimming along reminded me how much i enjoy distance swimming. i'd like to work a couple sessions in the pool into my workout routine again (though its just not the same as open water!).

part of my reasoning for getting in the water is that a friend of mine and eric's was trying to get us to do the splash and dash later this month with him. it will be his first race...and the first race involving swimming i've done in awhile. it should be fun. its on a tuesday night and is a ~750 swim followed by a ~3k run. so basically its going to hurt like crazy because the distances are so short and you're constantly redlining.

i'm thoroughly entrenched in a new book. its called the brain that changes itself by norman doidge. it discusses brain plasticity and how people have overcome injuries, obstacles, learning disabilities or birth conditions by retraining their brain (and their body) to do things, tasks, whatever the previous problem was...for example, people have recovered from strokes to very high degrees with certain types of training. reading this has my head spinning with applications for gait rehabilitation and has me curious about training applications for athletes as well.

hibiscus

our first plant! this is the hibiscus plant brooke and jason gave us. the angle of this photo makes it look deceptively small. it is actually a couple plants. one has yellow flowers and the other has orange and pink ones. all of them sit in a beautiful turquoise container. i'm excited to see how it takes off!

since arriving back in austin, i've bumped my training back up. i've decided to shoot for the cactus rose 50 miler on october 30. its held out in bandera, tx and has some tough crumbly, limestone trails. its a two-loop course and we have to bring all our own aid...which definitely makes the cost of the race drop a bit! this jump in training has made me able to sleep on command. i hit the pillow at night and am out...and then i can take naps in the afternoon and still sleep the following night. so far i've run and biked to and from work. one evening we also took the bus home together just to see how long it took and where it dropped us off. if i can get away with it, i plan to bike as much as possible.

we had our first sunday in our new ward (church congregation) this morning. there seem to be lots of young couples who are also grad students. there is a family who speaks french so eric will get to put more of his french skills to use and i'll continue to learn at least one word a day. the best thing about this ward so far is that it is packed. if you arrive late, you basically don't get a seat, which is refreshing. i'm excited to meet some new people and get to now a few people who i have seen around the institute but never had the opportunity to talk to much!

till one day it cracks them open

the sad thing about the above picture is that it captures the cleanest our apartment has been since getting back from our travels. it has taken us quite a bit of time (and we're rather efficient) to get all of the boxes, wrappings and suitcases cleared. in the meantime we took a break on this room and had our way with the office, which now looks like a different room...but there's even still stuff in there that is being donated or trashed. wedding aside, we're realizing how much stuff we have and what can go.

on a completely different note, i downloaded my pictures from the last week or so of travels. the photo below is of a poem that was on the wall at the rhode island school of design (risd) museum which i got a chance to see when i was in providence last week. may joy fill your weekend!

stuff

our apartment is currently so full of stuff i have to step aside to let eric pass me if we're trying to move about. we have two extra beds from when we moved not to mention tons of boxes from shipping of wedding presents. we haven't had time to go through everything yet given how we have basically been out of town since the wedding. a friend of ours told us today that it never gets better and we looked at him and at each other and said with certainty that it will get better. we both value space and there is currently anything but.

i have been following minimalist blogs on and off for awhile now. every couple months i seem to go through a phase where i need to declutter. i take books i have read and don't plan to read again to half-price books. i get rid of clothes that don't fit or that i just don't wear. other than my bikes, i just don't like having tons of stuff around, and i am starting to question the need to have three bikes in texas. i think i could probably do with one less? one of the blogs i follow is called miss minimalist. her most recent post was about ways to simplify your life. i think part of the reason some of this appeals to me so much is that i frequently find myself feeling like i don't have enough time lately...and so by paring down my schedule and the number of "things" i have to look after, i have generally found i have a little more free time and piece of mind. i feel like i have more time to try new recipes and read books and write in my journal...its just, well, nice.

i also deactivated my facebook account yesterday. i felt like i was spending to much time on it, so i just quit. i am preparing to not know what's going on every moment of people's lives. i am hoping that in doing this i will have more time to work and to actually interact with people in person. the latter in particular maybe a bit of a whimsical idea, but i figure its worth a shot. with my new found free time i may also post a few photos of the apartment and all the amazing food i got to enjoy when i was back east last week!

wedding, cruising and now a conference

a lot has happened in the last few weeks. first and foremost, eric and i are married now! our photographer has posted a sneak peek of our wedding photos here.

we are both very grateful to our friend bridgid, who pointed out midway through our reception that we were not legally married...it took my friend a little longer than expected to do my hair and instead of arriving at the ceremony site two hours early, i arrived approximately 10 minutes early. this meant that we didn't sign all the necessary paperwork before the ceremony. bishop stebbing had to come back to the reception later to sign the paperwork...

which brings us to the reason bishop had left us in the first place. an elderly friend of ours suffered a massive heart attack at the reception. it was good that he was there though and not at home because my mom's a nurse, my second mom is a cardiac nurse, a friend is trained as an emt and many others were certified in cpr. our elderly friend's cardiologist said if cpr hadn't been started immediately, he probably wouldn't be with us now. he's still recovering in the hospital, but is making progress. and his spirits still seem to be okay as he was definitely able to laugh at my expense when i went to visit him yesterday.

we went on a cruise to the mexican riviera for our honeymoon. it was nice to get away from cellphones, facebook and email for a week and get to spend time together not talking about things that needed to be done for the wedding. i really enjoyed puerto vallarta, but in i think in part that's because the mountains reminded me so much of hawaii.

i have been enjoying the celebrating, but i'm excited to have life be a bit more "normal" for a bit and to have the opportunity to actually get some things done in lab. i'm on track to graduate in may, but there's still a lot that needs to happen (and be written!) between now and then.

this week doesn't count

last weekend eric told me that this week does not count as a week because it was going to go by too fast. now, late thursday afternoon, i am finding myself agreeing with him. its hard to believe our friends and family start arriving next wednesday.

i'm currently (taking a break from) finishing up a poster that i have to present at a conference a few days after our cruise. i have most of the editing i need to get done for my manuscript minus a new figure that i need to make. it turns out that i'm going to be ta-ing for a new biomechanics class that is being developed this fall so i also will be meeting with the professor i'll be working for before i leave. i am currently also standing amazed at the knowledge that i am about to start my fourth (and presumably final, unless something goes horribly wrong) year at ut.

two more friends got engaged earlier this week and i am super excited for them. i'm heading to san antonio this saturday for the wedding of some other friends. i guess august is "the season" this year. i know three other couples who are getting married in the three weeks following our wedding.

eric and i finished our harry potter movie marathon last night. we watched all 6 of the movies in 8 days. i think that was more time movie watching than we had spent the better part of this year so far combined. i am excited to be on a movie fast now for a bit. that said i thoroughly enjoy both the books and movies from that series.

and now i am finished breaking from my poster and ready to immerse myself in it again. until next time!

29 years

yesterday was my 29th birthday. eric and i went out saturday night to try a new restaurant of my choosing to celebrate. i found a couple of raw and vegan restaurants that i wanted to try so we went to one of them...we went to the one that had not received the review saying that it was similar to cafe gratitude, my favorite restaurant located in berkeley, ca. i ordered a salad that sounded delicious but arrived at our table containing 3 of the original ingredients listed on the menu, one of which was spirulina. there are very few foods i have tried where a mere bite has made me want to put my fork down, but spirulina, it turns out, is one of them. our pee smelled like spirulina for hours afterward. all we could do was laugh. i am fortunate that eric is so willing to humor and try new places that are a bit too hippie for him.

on sunday, my actual birthday, i made dinner and we busted out my grandmother's china! i don't like seeing china not be used, so i'm going to start coming up with reasons to use it. for dessert, eric wanted to make mangoes with sticky rice, one of my favorites. we spent the rest of the evening playing scrabble, which eric gave me for my birthday. he said it was difficult to make sure i didn't just go out and by it myself because every time he mentions playing boggle i say it would be fun and then immediately comment about how we need to have scrabble in our game collection too.

headlands 50 miler went well last weekend (july 17). the course was tough and hilly. i felt undertrained going into it, but i think i did okay. i think where i went wrong however was thinking that it would be okay to ride my bike to work last week. i only live about 9 miles from work, so its not that far and the route i take is flat...however, when your legs are already trashed from running 50 miles of large hills, apparently it doesn't matter how flat it is. the end of last week found my quads cramping on and off if i sat in one position for too long. i've upped my banana consumption and it seems to have gone away. i went out for an easy 3 mile run this morning. my legs feel like lead, but at least i'm running a wee bit again. i think i will be staying off the bike for a few more days.

last week we also commenced a harry potter movie marathon. eric had never seen the movies or read the books and i decided that needed to change...although i didn't think it needed to warp into a marathon necessarily. we began wednesday night with year one. by saturday night we were through year four. we took sunday off (too much movie watching). we are planning to watch years five and six this week...then eric will be caught up so we can go to see the movie that's coming out in november (yes, november, this is why i mentioned not intending for the movie watching to be a marathon).

our wedding is one week from friday. lots of little things still to do but everything seems to be moving along nicely in general!

enroute to sf

i'm currently waiting for my second delayed flight of the day. this time however i'm in colorado, one of my favorite places to be stuck. apparently this is in part due to cloudy weather in sf, but it also seems to be due to a delayed flight that's currently occupying our gate.

i'm a little nervous for this weekend. i generally go into races feeling prepared. this time i feel prepared to finish but not to kick butt and take numbers if that makes any sense at all. in packing yesterday i was pulling out everything i could possibly need...windbreaker, rain gear, headlamp, papaya pills, salt tabs, extra bladders for my hydration packs, water bottles in case i end up not wanting to wear my hydration back (its only 3.9-4.6 miles between aid stations). i have extra shoes, extra socks, extra clothes. hopefully i won't use most of this stuff, but it never hurts to be prepared. the lady at checkin this morning accused me of having a rather large bag for only going for a weekend. while on some level i agreed, i also wondered if she'd ever seen an athlete pack...i have twice as much stuff as most people for any given trip simply due to the need to pack running clothes as well as normal clothes and i don't even pack excessive amounts of running clothing unless i need to for whatever reason.

i am currently working my way through 'desert solitaire' by edward abbey. so far its great. moab is one of eric's favorite places and i've only driven through. as its not somewhere i have current plans to travel to, i figure i can at least learn more by reading...that and i just like nature writing. the book is based mostly off of abbey's journals while he was working as a park ranger at arches national monument before it became touristy. the colors for our wedding are plum and sage green. eric suggested having purple sage in some of the floral arrangements. abbey mentions it early on in the book saying "purple sage: crush the leaves between thumb and finger and you release that characteristic odor, pungent and bittersweet, which means canyon country, high lonesome mesaland, the winds that blow from far away." so, although we will be getting married in texas, a bit of moab and the canyonlands will be present at our celebration. not to worry, orchids, or a little bit of hawaii and the tropics, will be present as well!

engagement photos

less than one month to go before our wedding. our photographer just put a few of our pictures up on her blog and the rest are in the mail to me. i am looking forward to seeing them!

in the meantime work is like a whirlwind, in a good way. the committee that was supposed to review the big fellowship i submitted was supposed to meet yesterday so percentiles and scores should be up any day now. in the meantime, my dissertation research seems to be flying along...and yielding interesting results, which is always nice!

i've been able to ride my bike to campus more frequently lately and i'm enjoying it. its funny though because it makes me like driving even less...and its bringing back that wonderful feeling of freedom i experienced en route to alaska two summers ago. go figure.

outfit apartment: check!

my friends donna and dave fell in love with leadville when we were racing there last summer. so they bought a place there and moved. they didn't have enough space for all their stuff from austin in colorado so they decided to sell some of it. the result? eric and i just got a new bedroom set (queen bed with basically new mattress, dresser and nightstand) from pier 1 imports.


i had previously acquired some other furniture off of a childhood friend who finished up his master's at ut this semester and was moving back to the dc area. he was going to sell me a couch and then through in an another couch, a desk, a desk chair, a book case, a couple coffee tables, a bunch of kitchen stuff and a tv.

someone who used to live with eric's roommate gave us a kitchen table, a microwave and a stand for the microwave.

i have now outfitted our apartment with furniture for $650...total. as i had no furniture previously because i'd been living in the coop for the last few years, i thought it was going to cost a small fortune to outfit a new place. we have some incredibly generous friends.

my next task is decorating, or at least hanging a picture or two!

on a different note, i think my conference last week was exactly what i needed to get my rear end back in writing mode. i got back on wednesday evening and by late yesterday (saturday) afternoon, i had the first draft of my manuscript done. now i just have to finish the figures and get the paper out to my co-authors to start looking over. hopefully i will have this manuscript submitted to a journal in the next couple months and i should have another one following it not too long after! it feels nice to be productive!

laser pointer

i arrived in state college, pa, home of penn state university, earlier today. i'm here to give a talk at the us national congress of theoretical and applied mechanics. its kind of fun to say all of that because it sounds impressive. really though its a bunch of nerds talking about math.

we had a layover at washington dulles on our way here this morning. when we were getting ready to get off the plane, a few guys in front of me started chatting with each other, and i immediately thought, hey, they look nerdy, i wonder if they're going to the same conference. a minute or so later one pulls out his boarding pass for the next flight and i noticed that sure enough, they were on the same flight we were from washington to state college. my nerd radar is pretty good.

we checked in for the conference and they handed me a folder with what appeared to be a thumb drive and a program with all the sessions listed. i looked a little closer at the thumb drive and discovered that it was not in fact a thumb drive. rather, it was a laser pointer on a key chain. that's right, i now own a laser pointer on a key chain. look out world.

choir practice

we got a couple of our engagement photos from the photographer. above is one of our favorites. we really like debra, our photographer (www.debragulbas.com) and are looking forward to having her shoot our wedding!

eric is in utah for 3+ weeks so i get to go crazy. i went for a 33 mile or so run yesterday morning, ran a few mornings and then spent the evening reading. today, i went to choir practice after church and then came home, resumed my place on the couch and continued devouring my book (crazy, i know).

normally i read 8-10 books during the semester for fun, but i just haven't had as much free time lately. the result of this new found free time was that in the less than 36 or so hours i read a book from start to finish. its been glorious. i was reading "marry him: the case for settling for mr. good enough" by lori gottlieb. eric bought it actually and then gave it to me a month or so ago. it talks about how our generation has become so picky when it comes to dating and marriage and how our parents and grandparents generations looked at love and marriage in a much different way. she (lori) talks with scientists who study marriage, match makers, dating coaches and others to explore what people expect, what we should expect and what makes a good, happy marriage. while its geared towards women, particularly "feminist, liberated" women, guys can relate to it too. i can assure you that i have definitely been guilty of some of the things she mentions and eric says he has been too. i didn't necessarily agree with everything she had to say, but it was insightful.

grandma's china

my aunt sent me my grandma's china and it arrived in my apartment this morning. a bunch of the tea cups didn't make it in the shipping, but other than those, there were complete place settings for 8 and another 4 partial settings. its so beautiful.

its funny how when you're young you think you're completely different from your family. but then as you get older, you hear stories about people and realize that you actually have a lot in common. my mom told my brothers and i not too long ago that my grandfather (her father) used to go out dancing all time. he loved to dance. one of my brothers and i both seem to have inherited some sense of rhythm and love to dance. my grandmother had excellent taste in china...or maybe i inherited her good taste. i think i also inherited my aunt bridget's draw to the divine as well as her ability to find a good deal. and this is all aside from all the similarities i seem to have to my parents. maybe some of it is coincidence, maybe its not, but it sure is interesting!

baddest badass

every once in awhile, you need to do one of those workouts that you know can tear you apart and then tear it up during said workout. this morning i participated in the tour of tens, which was put on by someone in my trail running club. michelle, the non-race director director, chose 5 of the toughest hills in austin and then challenged us to do 10 repeats of as many of the hills as we could in 6 hours. you would start at one hill (of your choosing) complete 10 repeats and then go on to the next. to be considered a finisher, you had to complete the 10 repeats on at least 1 of the hills in the tour.

i started my morning off with 10 repeats of jester, a hill i had only heard talked about as one of, if not the, hardest hill in austin to bike up. i finished my 10 repeats and ran into someone i had met last august who had also run leadville and who is leading a group training to run it again this year. his group was headed in the same direction as me, so i just waited for them to be ready and then we all headed to the next hill together. the next hill was mt. bonnell. mt. bonnell is not small, but it felt easy having just run jester. after finishing up at mt. bonnell, we headed to the hill of life, a "classic" texas trail covered in crumbly limestone. i finished repeat number 10 at exactly 1p, which was the official stopping time for the tour. i was the only person to finish all 10 repeats on the 3 longest hills of the challenge and as a result, i won the baddest badass award and a certificate that says i completed the tour, which i can hang on my fridge. i'm particularly excited about the latter as i currently have nothing on my fridge.

i'm also giving two thumbs up to girl talk therapy today. wedding politics were giving me a headache and i got to talk to kehau about it for a long while. she was able to share some advice...and then laugh at me and say she was grateful she was not in my position. hopefully it all gets sorted out soon.

i can see...fire?!

i haven't lost my contacts very frequently in the almost 15 years i've been wearing them...but each time i have, my gratitude for my sight is renewed. the sink at dhaus ate my contact one last time the night before i moved out and it was not to be recovered. i found an eye doctor, got checked out and we put in a new order for my contact. it arrived only for me to discover that it was not the right prescription. monday i got rechecked out and we ordered another new contact which i got to pick up this morning. as i was riding to work i found myself noticing how clearly i could see the leaves on the trees (and the cracks in the roads...) and it was glorious.

i also got an interesting piece of news yesterday. eric and i are getting married at a place called barr mansion here in austin in august. two nights ago we had a really bad storm, and the artisan ballroom at barr mansion, where we were supposed to have our reception, got struck by lightning and burned to the ground. seriously. they are putting up a tent and decorating it elaborately, but they anticipate not having a new ballroom ready to go for 4 months. so it appears that our reception will now be in a very fancy tent out in the country. the gardens where our actual wedding ceremony was going to take place were touched. fortunately, we were planning to get married regardless of the ultimate location of our ceremony or reception.

on the bike again

i now have a lovely commute by bike to work. there are bike lanes and quiet streets the whole way. the rain doesn't even phase me, but that might be because its so warm outside that even if it wasn't raining i would still be soaked upon arrival at school.

i am thoroughly enjoying the new place although i am still not quite moved in yet. normally i unpack things immediately, but i have been rather slower about it this time. i'm not sure why. possibly due to this slowness, eric is kicking my butt into unpacking gear. he is headed to utah for just over three weeks and has to move out of his apartment before he goes...which means that all of his stuff is moving in my apartment (soon to be our apartment). last night i tackled my clothing. the rest of this week, the office/store room for sporting equipment will be my project.

wedding planning is going well. yesterday my dress arrived in austin and the invitations were put in the mail in california (go mom!). things are falling into place. we're having our engagement photo shoot tomorrow, so hopefully i will be able to post some of those pictures in the near future. we also booked our honeymoon and will doing a cruise to mexico on royal caribbean cruise line the week after our wedding. we're both looking forward to it...particularly the vacationing and not having to worry about the details bit.

just over a month left to go until the headlands 50 too. this saturday i'm doing something called the tour of tens with some other people from the trail running group here. you have to do 10 repeats of as many of the 5 chosen (large) hills in austin in 6 hours or less. austin is not mountainous, but it definitely still has some shorter steeper hills. its going to be rough, but i think it'll be good training for the headlands course. that course is at sea level but still has lots of climbing and descending. actually, one of the best things about my new neighborhood is the fact that it is near some of the bigger hills in austin. i can go out and run hills for a few hours at a time and not be doing repeats.

moving

i am moving out of german haus tomorrow. i have had 3 incredible years here. i had not thought much about how much i would miss it until my housemate hilda told me she had printed my goodbye picture. these pictures are put in frames and hung on the wall in the dining room so we all share the memories of living with those people. the picture that hilda handed me was one of jack and i a few years ago when we went to the full moon swim at barton springs. we are both flexing and have insanely cheesy grins on our faces. i've lived with jack all 3 years that i have been here. he has been a great roommate and was even crazy enough to do p90x with me this past fall. just one of many fun memories of things i've done with my housemates here. there are actually quite a few people (more than normal) moving out at the end of this semester to go home. its a bit bittersweet.

beauty also died this morning. she is our house cat who has lived here for at least 6 years. she had to be put to sleep as in the past week or so her health went from bad to worse.

lots of change happening everywhere around me. its crazy.

flying planes

for our monthiversary earlier this week, eric planned something special and i wasn't allowed to know what it was. he came over to pick me up from my co-op and telling me i just needed my water bottle and a blanket.

we drove down to zilker park and parked in the parking lot. then he opened the trunk of the car to reveal a picnic basket and a couple of remote control airplanes! we headed out to the middle of the field, set our stuff down and got out the planes. we flew them until the wind was too strong and then decided to start the picnic. we're mid-meal (pb & j's anyone?) and a woman walks by and comments about how there is a lot of lightning coming. a few minutes later it started to sprinkle so we packed everything back up and drove to another part of the park where we could sit on picnic tables in a pavilion. shortly after that it started to pour.

fortunately eric had brought our adventure book with him so we sat in the pavilion catching up on our adventure book entries until it got dark enough that it was difficult to see what we we were drawing. it was an awesome monthiversary.

otherwise, things have been crazy with school and life. i was able to collect all but one of the subjects i needed by the end of last week. two weekends ago was chris and julia's wedding (it was incredible!) and last weekend i met my mom in utah to go wedding dress shopping. i found a dress...its perfect! now we're on to invitations. i also just got approved for an apartment so i'm moving at the end of this month...which means now i get to outfit an apartment too!

back up your data!

yesterday i lost all of my dissertation data. don't ask. just remember to back up your computer. fortunately, i had only collected data on 4 subjects thus far and hadn't done much processing of the data because i have been too busy collecting. by the end of this evening, i'll have collected data on 4 more subjects, so at least i'm ending the week where i was half way through it?

i got a piece of fun news this evening too. during my senior year of college, i was one of the two coordinators for my graduating class for our "senior gift." each year the graduating class at mit gives something back to the institute. my year we noticed that there was no picture of the mit seal anywhere in that we could find on campus, so we decided to fix that problem. we decided to have a large copy of the seal made in bronze and hung in lobby 7, a large lobby on campus that is just off of mass. ave. many a visitor and most students pass through that lobby a couple times during the day. well, the seal was funded by monetary gifts from my graduating class. its taken 7 years (i graduated in 2003), but the money was finally obtained. today, i received an email informing me that the seal had finally been installed. the picture above is a picture of the seal after it was installed in lobby 7. the next time you're in boston, head to mit and check it out!

success!

have you ever had one of those days at work where things just come together? i had one of those today. i had one of my labmates be a subject for me today so i could pilot my data collection protocol. last week when i had my undergrad do this for me, the computer wouldn't let me collect data as it normally would. after trying everything i gave up for the day. well today, it happened again. so i got on the phone and called my friend alberto who works for the company that makes the software i use. fortunately for me, alberto happened to be stuck in an airport and he was more than happy for the distraction and helped me solve the problem in less than 5 minutes. i then got to collect a trial for each of the conditions i will be looking at in this particular study. more specifically, i will be examining how one's stability changes when one walks with "cautious" gait characteristics, such as with shorter or wider steps. i won't actually be tripping anyone in this study, so if you'd like to participate, let me know. you will be paid!

i also had to present in lab meeting today and had decided to share some of the data i recently finished analyzing with the group. the results appear to be the first indicating that you can actually change a certain measure of stability by physically perturbing someone, which is important because up to this point, we thought these measures of stability only indicated something inherent to the body system. my advisor told me to run the stats and then start writing the paper. yeah! its nice to be moving to the next step in the process.

i spent a good chunk of time this past weekend driving all over and checking out venues for our wedding. eric was out of town for a conference so i was on my own to ask questions. we're going to go back and visit one of the places i saw this past weekend later this week so he can see it, and then we'll also check out one other place that's a little farther south. its amazing how after you start looking at bunch of places you can tell pretty quickly what you like and what you don't like...and how you can tell someone might not be telling the truth when they say they are "kid friendly"!

only 2 more to go

homeworks that is. there's less than 1 month left this semester, and i and everyone else i know can't wait for it to be over. this morning i figured out that yet again the book and professor i am teaching for this semester were wrong and because of it the students were ending up with all sorts of weird graphs on their homeworks. its kind of exasperating when a professor continually doesn't pay closer attention to what their teaching and then you, the ta, have to reteach the material while trying to not undermine the professor (despite the fact that you really want to). only 2 homeworks left in the semester though and one of them goes out today.

in other news, i've very quickly realized that wedding planning is stressful. you have a ton of friends and family, a certain amount of time, a lot of peoples' schedules and the need to not make your parents take out a second mortgage (i've really heard of people who spent $100k on their wedding, seriously!). eric and i are going to check out a place on wednesday, and i'm in the midst of making arrangements to check out another one on friday afternoon while eric's out of town at a conference. and this weekend i might even try dress shopping. my free time is quickly becoming filled with party planning!

we're engaged!

the ring!

eric and i got engaged on friday!

i need to preface this story with a review of our first date. on our first date, we went to see where the wild things are the imax next to campus. then we walked down to the amy's ice cream (a local ice cream place) on 6th street. after ice cream we walked to zilker park. most of the park was fenced off due to a recent music festival, so we sat on the swings by barton springs and talked for a long while. then we walked back to my house (this totaling at least 6 miles of walking for the evening) and sat in my room looking at pictures and talking until the wee hours of the morning. it was awesome.

so, fast forward to the present. friday night after work we went out to dinner. this was nothing out of the ordinary. we went to try zocalo which is a mexican restaurant on west lynn in the clarksville neighborhood of austin, continuing in our quest to try lots of restaurants in austin. after dinner we drove around the neighborhood for a few minutes to see if there were any cute looking houses for rent (we found one but it was about twice as much as either of really wanted to pay for it).

then we headed over to amy's and got ice cream (mango ice, which is non-dairy, is awesome by the way). next we drove over to zilker park and parked by barton springs. we walked into the middle of the fields and sat watching the stars (or clouds covering the stars) for a bit. it was kind of late so we decided to head back towards the car that and eric had mentioned needing to read me his poem. eric writing poetry is also not out of the ordinary. we will even text to each other in verse. on our way back to the car, we stopped by the swings on the playground and talked for awhile longer. there was a father racing up the slides with his daughter which was pretty amusing to watch. eric said again that he wanted to read me his poem and suggested we walk up to the hill. so we walked up the hill and sat on the curb in one of the parking lots underneath a street light.

i'm not sure whether it was his words or my allergies that brought tears in my eyes (i'm allergic to the grass in texas, just here, no where else, seriously), but his poem was beautiful. eric had been working on it for the last 5 months, adding to it as funny or memorable things happened. it is several pages long. at the start of the last the last stanza of the poem he pulls out a ring and the final line of the poem was, trish mcandrew, will you marry me?

side view

and of course i said yes! i have known i wanted to marry him from the first time we went out.

now here's the rather amusing part. thursday night at about 11:30p i am woken up by my phone beeping. i check my phone and eric has sent me two text messages and left me a voicemail saying that what i do i should delete the email he just sent me. of course this means i need to open my email immediately and see what he's talking about. i check my email and there are three emails from his that say in the header, delete all previous emails from me tonight! don't even both opening them! so i call eric and ask what is up because he's normally not bent out of shape like this. he explains that i just need to delete everything, that he was talking to a friend about somethings, that its time sensitive and he can tell me at the beginning of the week, but that for now, i just had to delete everything without opening. so i do. but now i'm very suspicious.

well, after eric proposes he tells me that he had been talking to his friend anamae on the phone on thursday night and had told her he'd send her a picture of the ring. he went to send the email and just typed my name in and hit send without thinking about it. realizing what he'd done, he started calling, texting and emailing me to get me to not open the email...the email had contained a picture of him holding the ring up to his webcam so anamae could see the ring. fortunately, the picture was blurry and wouldn't have shown me what it looked like specifically anyway, but i didn't even know he had a ring (though i did know he'd asked my dad for permission when we were in san francisco over spring break), so it would have kind of put a damper on the surprise. at least we could laugh about it afterward!

the ring itself is a circular diamond set in a white gold ring. if you look at it from the top, it looks like a plain shiny silver bands with a circular diamond, but if you look at it from the side, the part holding the diamond is sort of woven. its beautiful. eric has great taste. i will try to post a picture or two of it this evening.

we are planning on getting married sometime in late july or august in austin (before school starts). we have to find a location and such and then we'll start with all the other details. its going to be a crazy next few months! i'm so excited!

live from PE class?

one of my labmates had to go out of town and needed to people to cover his classes for him. one of the classes he tas is basketball. so today i discovered where the gyms are at gregory gym. i'm currently sitting inside the very nice tennis courts, below the jogging track, dressed (according to my housemates) like i'm going to dance class because i didn't feel like getting dressed up today (and by that i mean i didn't want to wear jeans). the joys of being a grad student where i can get away with that!

my grant proposal was supposed to be turned in yesterday, but my advisor didn't get around to looking at anything i sent him last week until yesterday...he sent me comments back yesterday afternoon while i was ta-ing. needless to say i was a tad frustrated. its really annoying when people expect you to suddenly have free time to make up for their lateness (this is me having very little sympathy). instead i had to email the person i was supposed to give everything to yesterday to tell her that due to jon not getting stuff to me i wouldn't be able to get everything to her until today. sigh.

at least its almost the weekend! general conference during the day and then a bunch of the girls from church are getting together to decorate Easter eggs saturday night! i love opportunities to be creative, particularly when work/school has been stressful.

time goes by fast

this morning i got an email from my sorority saying something about celebrating 10 years of membership. my immediately reaction was, oh how cute, they're celebrating people who have been in the sorority for 10 years. then i realized that 2010 marks 10 years since *I* joined the sorority during my sophomore year of college. it is crazy how fast 10 years can go. it doesn't seem like college was THAT long ago.

i'm getting antsy for summer. one of my housemates was having a bit of a rough morning and was joking that it felt like a monday. i few minutes later i walked into the kitchen to observe him cleaning up his oatmeal which had exploded out of the bowl in the microwave. i told him to remember that it was monday. at that point, the three other people in the kitchen turned to me and said, wait, its monday? we all started laughing as we realized that it wasn't okay to make jokes about what day it is at this point in the semester. no one really knows what day it is. all they know is that the work load is picking up and summer can't come quick enough!

piano

i had a humbling (or in eric's words, terrifying) piano experience yesterday. the girl who normally plays the piano for our last church meeting on sunday had to leave before the closing hymn. so she happily points out before said meeting again that i play the piano. she asked me to find a song that i could play so i picked one of the one's i have been practicing...and then we decided i would just play the right hand of it because that would be easier. i sat nervously through the meeting and then sat down at the piano at the end of the meeting to play.

well, i played in recitals when i was a kid, but i have never played when people are singing while i am playing. so i played the song once through and then everyone started singing on the second time. needless to say, i messed up a lot. the first time i did it there was a pause but then everyone kept going and i started again where they were. this continued through all three verses with the third verse being the best as far as my playing was concerned. i am grateful for all the women who were singing and didn't let my errors disrupt the song.

it is amazing how you can practice by yourself and play BOTH hands with no errors...and then when i played in front of people who were singing i was only playing one hand (which is easier) and i messed up a lot. my friend lindsay informed me after church that that is pretty standard. she said her brother would play at home and it sounded amazing but when he played in church he'd mess up.

i practice for 30-60 minutes a few times a week, but this gives me all the more motivation to practice (which i happily did for a good hour and a half yesterday afternoon too). it also gives me more appreciation for the people who play every week in church and never seem to mess up!

sf

its been so long! eric and i went to sf for spring break. these are a few of the highlights.

boudin's for soup in a san francisco sourdough bread bowl.

playing with bubbles in the exploratium...if you're there check out the tactile dome!

flowers with leaves like clovers on 3/18 in muir woods.

hiking in the redwood forest in muir woods

driving across the golden gate bridge

eric and i at the oakland temple

the tulips were up at the oakland temple...SO beautiful!

eric and i on alcatraz island with san francisco in the background.

we had warm sunny weather the entire time we were there. as a result we made up for being sick the last time were in town.

we got back to austin last sunday night and hit the ground running. this semester is so busy its leaving little time for much else. i should be hearing back about the teaching fellowship i applied for soon. in the mean time, i'm currently working on another fellowship application...this one is a big one. it has to have all the components of a standard grant submitted to the national institutes of health for funding. other than that, i'm trying to get everything in the lab going to start my next data collection.