leaving security behind

the awkward run

2012-02-03T11:17:00.000-06:00

every once in awhile something makes me laugh so hard i cry. a friend and colleague sent me this video of a fewer choice runners earlier today and i found myself crying at my office. maybe this is why it is good that i study gait for a living.

i would like to see an awkward pregnant lady running video too. the picture below was taken this morning after my run so you don't have to see if i look awkward or not while running. i'll be 22 weeks along on monday!

inspiration

2011-12-02T15:58:00.000-06:00

a month or so ago, i discovered pinterest through a blog i follow. the blogger had posted a link to an image of a dancer and i wanted to discover where the picture had come from because it was beautiful. it had been posted by this pinterest pinner (is pinner the right word?). the photos she (?) has collected are inspiring and i found myself browsing through them again this afternoon. it constantly amazes me how many emotions can be communicated in a single photograph.

i have a photograph sitting below my computer screen at work as of late yesterday afternoon. it is a picture of the small person currently growing in me whose heart beats three times as fast as mine. i'm excited to meet this small person in june.

sleeping

2011-10-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

found this here

i have been sleeping "like a rock on sleeping pills" lately, but mountains appear to be moving while i'm awake. work is going in full force. i am engaged in and enjoying what i am doing. i have just finished peak mileage and am now tapering for a 50k next week, probably the last one i do for the year. i was called as a leader for the young women at church.

last night in the car on the way to drop one of the young women off, i was asked to tell them something unique about myself. i started generally describing what i do and the 8th grader sitting next to me turned sharply and said, you're a scientist? i said yes and told her more about what i did. we talked about running and dancing and karate. and then she asked if i new much about astronomy. i said no, but i know astronomers and could try to arrange for her to meet them. she told me she wants to be an astronomer and dreams of being surrounded by scientists. i told her being surrounded by scientists is an amazing thing and told her about a program she could do in high school that would surround her with scientists. and then we arrived at her house.

as we were pulling away, the other leader in car turned to me and said, that was amazing. apparently this young lady doesn't normally talk very much. i believe i met a kindred spirit last night and i believe that she will move mountains.

happy trails and new projects

2011-09-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

my feet flew like eagles

my heart knew no boundaries

my spirit dreamed that the trail would never end

~from an email signature of another runner on the trail running list

we survived the earthquake and the hurricane. the weekend of the latter turned out to be an excellent time to get the sewing machine working, so many months after its arrival. i turned a pair of women's size 24 calf-length linen pants into a skirt that fit me (many sizes smaller). i need to pick up some backing to put a few embroidery touches on the front.

we also survived the baltimore grand prix...by escaping to shenandoah national park for a couple nights of camping. it is beautiful there! we hiked and ran, made smores, learned about the history of the park and even got to spend a few moments reading in the rocking chairs at one of the lodges. we arrived home to only have to put up with 24 hours of indy cars racing past our street.

on labor day, we labored. we went through those bags and boxes that weren't unpacked and had all the random odds, ends and papers tossed in them. we cleaned. i mended, baked, read and stretched. my next project is to make a braided rug for our living room. hopefully i will be able to take pictures though as i lost my camera in colorado!

earthquakes and hurricanes, oh my!

2011-08-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

earlier this week we had an earthquake and now we waiting to see whether or not a hurricane will hit us this weekend. this is enough to leave one distracted and rather unproductive at work. i find myself wanting instead to be helping prepare our home and our friends homes for anything that may come our way this weekend.

i reaching a certain concentration low, i decided that i needed to write down goals that i had for postdoc in the next two years. this at least helped me re-gain my focus for a period and start delving into the medical literature to see what i could find out about how we control our gait. it is amazing how much we learn not from studying healthy people but from studying people who have disordered movements.

my stomach was a little disordered last weekend. i ended up struggling up hope pass again this year and missed the time cutoff at the 50-mile mark by 22 minutes. this meant i had to stop running. again, i don't think i'd had enough calories, but i had done a great well enough with my hydration. i have been kind of bummed out this week, but i think that partially has to do with the fact that i'm recovering and not getting as much exercise as normal...so its probably withdrawal that's making me sad rather than the race itself. i will finish eventually.

the plus side to this finish status, if you choose to look at it this way, was that eric and i found ourselves with a a free day in breckenridge that we had not been expecting. we were able to go on a short hike in the mountains (that was all my recovering legs could take) and time to just enjoy being outside and in breck. we are plotting ways to move there. unfortunately, my camera seems to have been misplaced so i don't have pictures to share from the race or from breck. hopefully i will find it soon!

from the mountains

2011-08-18T21:07:00.000-05:00

we are in the mountains. i love the profound stillness that exists here. eric has quickly taken a liking to the mountains in colorado, much to my pleasure.

my race is on saturday. i'm drinking water like there is no tomorrow and managing to stay somewhat hydrated. we have to pick up a few things tomorrow and go to medical check-in in the morning (they measure our blood pressure, weight, oxygen saturation, etc, so they have a baseline for comparison if we need medical attention) followed by racer orientation. after that i will commence making my ume musubis and finish the instructions for my crew and pacers. the weather is perfect.

i am trying to embrace my nervousness. i am getting lost in my own thoughts a lot staring at the mountains and visualizing the trails. i am on familiar ground and excited yet scared that i will make mistakes like i did last time. some of the cut off times have become more strict. if i have a good day these won't be issues with this, but the reality of this race is that you don't know what you're going to have to deal with physiologically, environmentally, etc, until you start running on race morning. that is part of what makes leadville such a great adventure though.

i will try to post some pictures of the mountains here soon.

heat wave

2011-07-25T08:57:00.000-05:00

we have been having a bit of a heat wave here on the east coast. naturally, the air conditioning for half of our house broke at the end of last week, and lucky for us, our room is on the 3rd floor of the house. temperatures in our room were in the 90s for most of the weekend. we slept in the empty basement room (which was at least 20 degrees cooler) on saturday night because it was too hot. last night though the new housemate had moved in and we were confronted with a night in our room again. i opened the door that leads out onto our small patio just to remind myself that it was hotter outside than in, but what i discovered was a very nice breeze. in fact, it felt cooler outside than in our room. so last night we opened the three large windows in the front of the house and the door in the back (our room with its bathroom and closet takes up the whole 3rd floor), let the ceiling fan run and discovered that, though warm, it was actually quite pleasant in our room. the breeze and fresh air were lovely.

we move into our new (permanent) place on wednesday. it will be nice to have everything out of storage and not be living out of a suitcase. i am excited to play the piano (keyboard) and not have to fight for space in the refrigerator. and the timing of the move is perfect to find anything i think i might use for leadville next month and take it with me this weekend.

saturday will be my last long training run before leadville--50 miles. i hope to test some more nutrition ideas. we had to fill out medical forms this weekend for the race which is bringing home how soon it really is. i was perusing the leadville 100 website and discovered why i should be glad i did not go out for training camp this year...snow. there was so much of it that it was not safe to run part of the course and on another section they had to "make" trail through the snow to be able to run it. i am wondering what this bodes, if anything, for next month. i wonder how high the water will be in the stream crossings, how cold the air temperature will be and if it will snow. racing in the cold is a different animal from racing in the heat, so i know that no matter how much i train, there will probably still be some things i am learning or experimenting with while i'm racing. i suspect this is why so many people tell me that "life" is training for these races--doing things when you're hungry, tired, cold, hot and sore while doing your best to keep your attitude positive and your body in forward motion. i am excited though to say the least.

movement

2011-07-20T08:38:00.002-05:00

"The body was designed to move and movement is the great elixir of life. Where there is lack of movement life becomes stagnant and stale. Human life is a mind/body event. Simply put, what you think affects your body and what you do with your body affects your thinking. So if you wish to improve or change the output of this continuum you are best served by addressing both."

~Author Unknown

I thought this was beautiful. Movement is a very powerful thing.

bonjour!

2011-07-06T11:54:00.002-05:00

i decided that at least one of my pictures should have me in it to prove that i am in fact here in belgium and taking these pictures. we had a "light" day at the conference. i went to one of the keynote lectures and then, set off in search of food that didn't involve french fries, mussels or mayonaise (i wonder if belgians really do eat them all together as we're told or if they just tell the tourists they do and then laugh when said tourists are not looking).

no, i wanted something less heavy and something that my body was more used to digesting...so i went in search of belgian vegan food. about a block from the lovely arch above sits the little restaurant and store pictured below.

i grabbed a to-go lunch full of all sorts of different veggies with all sorts of spice combinations i had never had before. most were winners but i wasn't a fan of whatever was on the artichoke. i ate in the sun on a lovely little bench in the park on the other side of the arch.

when i finished lunching, i continued on my self-guided tour of brussels and happened upon this:

brussels is the captial of europe. i wandered around the streets checking out all the e.u. headquarters buildings. outside of one of them was the following story:

aside from the gender confusion, i think we need more teachers like him/her. that teacher makes me want to learn too.

that and my experiences reading the other signs about the history of the e.u. brought home needing to learn a bit more about world history (exercised my freedom of choice and elected to not take that course in high school!).

my tour then led me through the rain to central station and then to the grand place for a tasty late afternoon waffle break. i saw the palais, a church that appeared to be on the palais compound and then did a lot of window shopping as i wound my way back to my hotel.

i am happily sitting down now.

belgium

2011-07-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

there are lots of lovely walkways in brussels. the weather here has been sunny and very pleasant given the heat of maryland at present.

i gave my talk, poster presentation and co-chaired a session at the conference today. late afternoon i decided that was enough work for one day and it was time to go play tourist. i headed towards the grand place and enroute stumbled upon st. michael's church. the stained glass was amazing. the above picture is the organ, which seemed to be floating in air and which sounded incredible echoing through the space.

i arrived in the grand place to discover that the square was being overtaken. the police informed us that a "medieval spectacle" was taking place that evening. there were grandstands set up and people walking around in tights and puffy hats looking like they just came from a graduation ceremony (they were in costume). hundreds of people filled the square as evening went on.

i was kind of stalking this guy when i realized what he was doing. when i walked into the square, there was music playing and a beautiful, but kind of eery? voice singing. it was perfect for the location. i stood there listening for awhile taking it all in with all of the other tourists milling about...and then i noticed someone who appeared to be wearing a microphone. this was the guy singing. they were testing his microphone settings and he was walking about the square amongst the tourists singing, but he would put his head down so unless you paid close attention he looked like everyone else. a few other people started noticing though and also stopped to listen. the square is all stone and surrounded by taller buildings. the acoustics are amazing. it was incredible to just stand and listen.

i have two more days left of conference time. i am thoroughly enjoying it but hoping i will be able to take some time to explore brussels a bit more while i'm here...and maybe eat more than just belgian dark chocolate and fresh baguettes!

eat more fruit!

2011-06-18T11:54:00.000-05:00

all of my reading lately has led me to the conclusion that i should be eating more fruit and less dessert. in theory i already knew this, but sometimes it takes a few scary statistics to drive it home. this morning i went to a (relatively) nearby organic farm to pick fruit (note: i had been planning to do this independent of any scary statistics. berry picking is so much fun!). this was the first day they were open for the pick-your-own season and the bushes were bending over because they were so heavy with berries.

they gave me a bucket and pointed me to a field. i was enjoying myself so much i just kept going until the bucket was full (5lbs of blueberries!). afterward i went to another section of the farm for red and black raspberries. the best part was you could eat while you picked. yum!

so this is what $20 of fresh picked organic berries looks like. i froze a bunch of the blueberries for future smoothies.

prior to berry picking i also stopped by the farmers market (its amazing how much time you have on saturday morning of a recovery week in training!). lots of greens were to be seen. i'm excited to watch the market develop as the summer progresses and more fruits and veggies ripen.

koshari

2011-06-16T18:24:00.000-05:00

i made myself some delicious koshari for dinner this evening. koshari comes from egypt and is a mix of noodles, rice, lentils, a spicy tomato sauce and crispy, browned onions. mine had a little bit of a twist to it though. i ran out of pasta noodles so instead i used mung bean (cellophane) noodles. it looked a little different but tasted great all the same. i used this recipe for the proportions and sauce and now have leftovers for a week.

my body seems to be slowly adjusting to getting up earlier again. it helps that it is light outside at 5:30a, which was definitely not the case in austin when i left. i have been ready for a nap around 10a though, which isn't good when i have seminars and meetings. a major clinical trial for preventing falls in the elderly is about to start in our department and i'm getting to sit in on the meetings. its definitely getting me excited about changes in balance as we age. based on what i see from ultrarunning alone (though i know people who are finishing up clinical trials with it as well), exercise definitely seems to have a role in maintaining balance. i am hoping to be able to explore more about what exactly that role is.

room with a view

2011-06-13T20:21:00.000-05:00

i just finished moving into the room i'll be in until late july. the picture above is the view from the balcony at the back of my room. yes, the water that you see is the inner harbor. i'm actually only about 4 blocks from a couple marinas and do shorter runs along the docks.

i made a last minute trip to nyc this weekend to visit rob and britt. i arrived in penn station and went straight to a benefit concert in a loft to see rob and britt's friend's band...and reggie watts showed up to perform next! but that was only friday night. the weekend was packed, but relaxing. we brunched. we walked. we cabbed. i ran. we found a great bookstore. we ate vegan food. we danced with hipsters in williamsburg, brooklyn until 2a. we visited a legit bakery (why are these only found on the east coast?). we strolled in central park and crossed 5th ave through the middle of the puerto rican parade. the only thing missing was eric. i am looking forward to going back to visit with him when he finishes school!

today was my first day at work. i am excited to be (formally) working again. in between taking care of all the fun logistical things, i am going through papers figuring out what experiments i want to do next. partially inspiring my thoughts at the moment is healthy at 100, which i just started reading. it provides an overview of 4 cultures that are known for having elders that live (abundantly) in their 100s. i have been thinking lately that next i may want to focus on elderly populations in general and issues of balance and posture during walking. hopefully i will be able to formulate a few questions to answer over the next couple months!

c & o towpath

2011-06-04T18:49:00.000-05:00

this morning i headed west to do my long run on the c & o towpath. it was beautiful and green and unpaved (!). i ran past great falls, many old locks and even more people. i saw the scariest beaver ever (and now respect the attempt mit athletics made a few years ago to have a intimidating beaver mascot), numerous cranes and a very large spider. when i finished, i ate the tastiest fresh peach ever.

baltimore!

2011-06-02T20:07:00.002-05:00

last week was an exciting week. fortunately our road trip was much less exciting than the 48 hours before we left and we arrived safely in baltimore on saturday. we spent the rest of the weekend and first couple days of this week on a mini-vacation in baltimore and dc. being in arlington cemetery on memorial day was an incredibly moving experience and definitely made me more fully realize the importance of the holiday.

i am settling into my new place in baltimore. i'm temporarily in a room different from the one i'll be living in for the next 7 weeks, but when i move, i will post a picture of the view...i can see the harbor from the deck outside the room. its beautiful! eric and i were able to sign the lease for the apartment we're renting before he left. we're scheduled to move in there in late july. it will be nice for both of us to move into it at the same time.

i have been enjoying all of the fun things i had forgotten about in the 8 years since i last lived on the east coast--humidity, bob evans, bertuccis, trader joes, farmers markets that are cheap, speeding, proximity to everything. that said, today, my first full day in baltimore by myself, i spent mostly around the house catching up on all of the emails and work i haven't been doing for the last week or so while traveling...like sending preferred dates, etc, to the travel agent who is arranging my flight for my conference in brussels at the beginning of next month and finishing my hiring paperwork so i can be paid when i start my new job!

and in my spare time, i've been studying trails in the area. yesterday i went hiking for an hour in oregon ridge park and drove past loch raven reservoir which is supposed to have a solid 10 mile loop around it. i'm planning to head to the c&o trail on saturday morning for my long run. hopefully the weather forecast is correct and it cools off a bit!

long run

2011-05-11T13:14:00.000-05:00

a finance blog i follow had a link to seth godin's blog today. a recent blog post of his was entitled how long is your long run? my mind immediately jumped to, well, my long run last weekend was just over 20 miles with 2 mile intervals throughout...and then i clicked on the link and realized he was not necessarily literally referring to a long run. oops.

my blog roll recently has been filled with discussions of frugality and stretching one's budget as we prepare to move to maryland, where cost of living is more expensive and where we be working on one income for a bit. i'm actually quite excited for the challenge. one of the things we have been struggling with recently is finding a place in our price range that's (a) not a closet and (b) in a reasonably safe area. the twist here is that we are doing this from austin. a couple weekends ago we were out in baltimore to look in-person, but ever since, we have been relying on some new friends to go check out places for us after we have pre-screened through photos, emails and phone calls. padmapper is one of my new favorite websites. we think we might have found a place in a very cute neighborhood called ridgley's delight (think historic 3-story rowhouses lining narrow, cobblestone streets). keep your fingers crossed!

cycling in style

2011-04-11T18:34:00.002-05:00

i had a bit off a rough commute home today. it was gorgeous outside and a lovely day to be on bike. and then i almost got taken out by a women in a white suv (and she realized it too when she finally bothered to look). i was experimenting with a new idea of taking the sidewalk the last ~0.3 miles to my apartment (you have to cross a highway and then make a left into my apartment complex which is trickier than it sounds given the hill also there). two cars (one right after the other) both with drivers on cell phones blocked my way as i was trying to cross the side (usually not busy) entrance to a plaza...then the guy immediately behind then, not on a cell phone but who did appear to see me, also pulls up and blocks my path. i decided after all of this that i would stick to riding in the bike lane and making all the traffic slow down so i can turn left into my complex.

the point of this is that i got home and was rather annoyed. so i decided to look up articles about commuting and how to practice being zen when commuting and the drivers around you are impatient (and clearly not paying attention). well, i happened upon some very fun links (see for example: riding pretty or chic cyclists). that made me happy about bicycle commuting again and provide the additional challenge of doing it in style...maybe even in heels!

i'm excited to get to explore a new city on a bike soon. i was reading this article, which highlights some of the differences between cycling here versus in europe, including the difference in driver-cyclist relationship. i am wondering if i could maybe explore brussels by bicycle in july (even if for only a day) when i'm there for my conference.

happy cycling!

passed!

2011-04-04T07:57:00.002-05:00

its been a busy last month! the most recent news is that i passed my dissertation defense last friday...and it wasn't because my committee members were playing an april fools joke on me! the defense went well. after getting over a fear that began the morning of that i would have a brain dump of everything i had learned in the last 4 years 5 seconds into my talk, every thing went smoothly. there was some good discussion with my committee members and then the asked me to leave the room so they could discuss amongst themselves whether i should pass or not. about 5 minutes later they invited me back in to tell me that i passed!

now i have to wrap up odds and ends--get a few forms signed and make a some corrections to the text of my dissertation...and then there's that whole bit about getting all the knowledge in my head about lab equipment bequeathed to other people. i'm the only one who knows how to use some things!

eric and i decided to move to the washington dc area. i'll be starting a postdoc in june at the university of maryland and am very excited about it. i'm extremely excited to be closer to family too. since college, i've never lived within a few hour drive of so many aunts, uncles, cousins and even a sibling! i'm looking forward to seeing people more often and getting to know everyone better. i'm also looking forward to exploring the dc area more. i only visited museums and such as a kid and eric has only passed through for a brief period as well...there's a bike trail that goes 187 miles from dc to cumberland (?)...i could do a point to point 50 mile training run on a (paved--maybe there's dirt on the side?) trail--multiple times!

this past week, the weather in texas finally hit the mid- to upper-90s in temperatures. its summer folks. i am writing this morning as my run has been temporarily canceled due to a rather large thunder and lightning storm. its weird though because i can still hear birds chirping just outside the window.

focus

2011-03-03T16:00:00.002-06:00

the last sections of my dissertation were due to my advisor on monday. this week i've been working on edits to the next to last section and beginning to prepare slides for the seminar i'm giving next friday at the university of maryland.

life has definitely slipped quietly into workaholic mode. i expected this. my defense is 4 weeks from tomorrow and the dissertation itself is due to my committee one week from monday. i'm actually really looking forward to spring break because i will have just submitted everything to said committee. writing has actually been enjoyable. it has stopped me from doing more and more and caused me to pause and reflect on the data i have, what it means and where its moving my field. its also caused me to realize how much i've matured (and how far i still have to go!) as a scientist.

we still have no idea where we'll end up later this year or even this summer. the only thing on the schedule is august 20-21, when i will be running 100 miles in the rocky mountains during my second attempt at leadville.

calla lilies

2011-02-15T08:15:00.000-06:00

eric got me calla lilies for valentine's day. i was setting my water glass down during breakfast this morning and a drop of water fell on my hand. i looked a little closer and discovered that the lilies were crying! some of the flowers and leaves had a single, small droplet of water precariously hanging from their tips. the beauty of detail!

april 1

2011-02-11T09:40:00.003-06:00

will be a day to remember. my dissertation defense is now officially scheduled for 1p on april fools day. i hope my committee will keep the jokes about not passing to a minimum!

exciting week!

2011-02-10T19:10:00.002-06:00

my advisor gave me the go-ahead at the end of last week to email my committee this week to set up my dissertation defense. i sent out the email earlier today and am waiting on one more committee member to email me his schedule. its looking like my defense might fall on april fools day. mentally i will have to begin preparing myself for april fools jokes involving failing my defense.

the job search is going well otherwise. i've had a phone interview with one university about a postdoc and am heading out there to give the department seminar talk on march 11. i was contacted last week by another university and asked for permission to call my references. they said they would be in touch about a phone interview soon. that is for a tenure-track faculty position in a department of health and human performance. i'm leaving out details (such as university names) for now until i'm a bit farther along in the process. it is amazing how quickly being faced with real jobs will change your perspective or awareness of what you do. all of a sudden i need to be prepared to answer questions about how much money and space i would need too set up a lab. that's not really something you learn in graduate school, but are kind of expected to know to start your own lab.

i feel like i'm going to be giving lots of 45 min to 1 hour long talks about my research in march though between interviewing and being "voluntold" to give a talk in the kinesiology department movement science seminar here. practice for my actual defense is good! an abstract i submitted for a conference in late april also recently got expected for a talk as well. i was pretty happy about that as they had something like a 32% acceptance rate for talks (that's not very high) because they had so many submissions for the conference.

in running news, i finally went and got checked out by a pt. she's actually another phd student in the kines department here but her "real job" is being the director of physical therapy at the austin branch of a sports performance center. she thought it was cool that i did 50 mile races, which is a much appreciated clinician characteristic that i find rather infrequently. on a completely unrelated note, it was rather amusing when two of the other pts who worked there took one look at my legs and commented about how i must be a triathlete. after a week of not doing anything (and i mean anything) because of my knee (oddly, not doing anything made it feel worse) and feeling rather out of shape, their comments were appreciated. back to the injury assessment though, cp, the pt, started by asking what was wrong. i told her and then added that i had been reading a book about back pain and realized that a lot of what i might be experiencing in my leg might be psychosomatic (i.e. anxiety manifesting itself physically). after checking me for everything from arthritis to meniscal and labral tears to lack of muscle flexibility and i tested negative for everything. she then looked at me and said, i think you're right. she recommended someone to do a couple sessions of deep tissue massage to make some of my muscles stop tensing up and then warned me that it would probably make me cry. i'm waiting to hear back from the massage therapist about setting up a time. i ran last night and this morning though for a bit and felt great. so the bottom line is that i'm fine, just a little tense...possibly with the few other things that are going on in my life right now. go figure.

i think it is (more than) worth mentioning the book i talked about above. its called 'healing back pain' by dr. john sarno. i picked the book up because it was referenced in another book i was recently reading, and remembering the back pain i had in college, thought the book might be worth a read if only to tuck the knowledge away in my head for a rainy day. the book does talk about back pain, but more importantly it talks about the variety of ways anxiety and anger can "appear" in us physically when we choose to ignore them--back pain, headaches, stomach issues and various other muscle and tendon related afflictions--and how these manifestations tend to not respond long-term to treatment very well, namely because the treatment is for symptoms not cause. the book is about 185 pages and a very quick read. i would definitely recommend it in general and specifically to anyone who has weird muscle pain and can't figure out what's causing it. the ideas in the book will, at the very least, give you another aspect of wellness to consider when treating injuries.

i'm hoping for another snow day tomorrow, but i'm not sure that it will happen this time. either way, i hope everyone has a great friday!

why, hello winter!

2011-02-03T10:43:00.003-06:00

i had forgotten what you were like. my husband was teasing me the other day, reminding me that i grew up in ohio and then lived in boston and that because of this the current 20 degree temperatures in austin should not bother me too much. well, regardless of wear you live, 20 degrees is cold. i haven't ridden my bike to work all week because its been in the upper teens and low 20s at the time i leave for work. i haven't yet figured out how to keep my hands warm with these temperatures, though apparently i haven't forgotten too much about layering otherwise though.

one of the faculty positions i applied for is in montana, and out of curiosity, i have been watching the weather forecast there lately too, just to see what winter temperatures are like. today, the windchill map of the country on weather.com indicated that it was warmer in montana than in most of texas, and the forecast for parts of montana today are actually warmer than the forecast for austin. we were on rolling blackouts yesterday for electricity and today the university is sending out emails informing us that they're watching the weather but to keep checking the webpage for updates on whether or not the university will close. kind of crazy.

small chain ring commute

2011-01-27T20:59:00.002-06:00

during my last race, i tripped and aggravated my IT band by proceeding to run 43 more miles. it took several weeks for it to feel normal again, but in the mean time my other IT band got aggravated. i haven't properly rehab-ed the other side though and this has come back to haunt me as lately its been very tight. i have cut back on the running and decided that i would also try only cycling in my small chain ring so that i'm not straining it too much by non-running activities. riding only in the small chain ring slowed my daily 7.5 mile commute to campus down a little bit this morning. that said, i arrived at work less annoyed at people in cars than normal. i liked that. i think i may stick with this slowing down thing.

though it is not necessarily reflected on my blog, i have been writing a lot the last couple weeks. i finished first drafts for the last two chapters of my dissertation and this week i'm working on edits to another one. when i send my advisor my revised draft tomorrow, i will commence editing the introduction to my dissertation. i'm actually enjoying writing at the moment because i'm getting to sit back and think more thoroughly about the meaning of my results. i feel fortunate that my job doesn't entail doing exactly the same thing everyday. at any given time i am somewhere in the brainstorm-propose-experiment-analyze-writepapertobepublished process, but fortunately, i'm constantly repeating this process with new data and new questions. this works out well because when i get sick of coding, its time to write. when i get sick of writing, its time to read, and when i get sick of that, its time to find subjects and interact with people again! (ironically, following this chain, when i get sick of people, i code again...hm) at this point, i'm thinking that my defense will end up being in april...which means my dissertation will leave my hands and head to my committee in just over a month. its a good thing i'm enjoying writing because there's a lot to do!

on a completely different note, i just finished reading two interesting books. one was called 'harvest for hope' by jane goodall. part of the reason i find her fascinating is because i've been to gombe stream national park in tananzia where she did all her chimpanzee research. to me, it was a magical place. her book reflects on the state of food production in the world, with a lot of references to what is currently happening in the united states. while she tries to remain hopeful, much of the book has a rather bleak outlook (warranted or not), unfortunately. she definitely supports the case for eating local organic food. if you've never read anything in this area (none of michael pollan's books, for example), you might find this interesting.

the other book i finished was 'how to live well without a car' by chris balish. in many ways i hope to be able to live without a car at some point and rely on walking and biking to get places. the book did cause me to reflect, but not necessarily in the way i would have thought. the author makes suggestions about moving to within a certain distance of work, for example, so that you can get to work without your car and about how you can grocery shop on a bike. i had never really thought of issues like this in the way he expressed them; i had simply gone out and done them because they fit with my lifestyle. so it was interesting to have someone else point out other reasons for adopting habits i already had and to have a few more suggestions of things to try that are already along the lines of my appreciation for walking and biking everywhere. if nothing else, i suppose the book has inspired me to enjoy my 7.5 mile commute to campus even when its cold because at least i am in touch with nature and not stuck in traffic on the freeway!

brussels

2011-01-16T16:19:00.002-06:00

i've been writing a lot this week, though not as much for the blog. i finished the first draft of another chapter to my dissertation. one chapter and an intro and conclusion for everything left to write. my goal is to have the draft of the last chapter done before the end of the month. i've set a pretty aggressive timeline for myself writing-wise, but i would like to graduate this semester. the last of my recommendations for faculty positions went in yesterday...so now i am waiting to hear back on everything job-related and keeping my eyes out for any other postdocs that come out this spring that look interesting.

last week, i also put together the first of two abstracts for the international society of biomechanics meeting this summer. it will be held in brussels, belgium in early july. assuming the abstracts are accepted i plan to be heading to europe for a bit this summer!

the weather here has been helping make all this writing happen efficiently (and the time waiting to hear about jobs pass quickly). its been in the 30s and raining. my hands have been numb as i've been biking to work sometimes because its been so cold. i could take the car, but there is something about heading to work by bike or foot that i really enjoy. i was sharing this with eric one evening only for it to be followed but a bit of irony. the following evening it was pouring rain and dark outside. though i had lights for my bike, i decided it might just be safer to take the bus home. i waited at the bus stop for 35 minutes at which point, i saw the bus turn the corner a block down the street...bypassing the bus stop entirely! i waited a few minutes longer to see if the bus would go around the block and come back and get us, but it didn't. the bus only comes once every 40 minutes (i can bike home in less time than that) so instead of waiting for the next one i walked a couple miles down the street and met eric for dinner. the next morning i ran to campus to pick up my bike. the weather ended up being worse than it had been the previous evening and i arrived home, with my bike, soaking wet and freezing. i guess i should have just ridden home in the first place!

cheap

2011-01-10T19:44:00.002-06:00

i just finished reading cheap by ellen ruppel shell. i highly recommend it although i'm not sure i will shop the same way again. the author examines discount culture in america, how it affects our economy, how it affects works rights, how it affects product quality and more.

my head is spinning with reflections on how it all fits in with my life. its especially timely as i am finishing up school and possibly will start making more money than i do now. i feel lucky that eric and i are on the same page when it comes to investing in quality products--be it food, clothes or what have you. he doesn't look at me like i have two left eyes when i say i want to try something new, which will invariably affect him as well.

in completely unrelated news, i have begun writing the last chapters of my dissertation. i figure if i write just a few pages a day i will be done in a few weeks...and then it will be a matter of editing text and changing figures. sometimes its difficult to sit down and concentrate on actually writing, but when i get going the words seem to simply flow out of me.

minimalism

2011-01-06T11:45:00.003-06:00

i have recently been meditating on actually DOING things and how at some point we have to stop being formally trained and just start learning as we go. i didn't start playing the piano again in theory. i had to actually start playing again to get comfortable with reading the music and getting my hands to move. i had to start playing while people were singing (and hitting a lot of wrong notes) to understand that playing while people are singing is a different animal than practicing or even just playing for others to hear. when i signed up for my first 100-miler, i stopped wanting to do one in theory and started actually preparing for one.

i have been following a number of minimalist and simplicity blogs for the last year and have been reflecting a lot on the choices i make and how my lifestyle does or does not allow me the time and energy to do the things i want. i came across a statement this morning which really seemed to resonate with me. dave bruno of a guy named dave described what he felt the purpose of the 100 Thing Challenge was for him. he wrote:

"The 100 Thing Challenge is about getting out of jail — the prison of American-style consumerism. It’s about breaking free from the shackles of always feeling like we need to get more stuff in order to get to the dream life."

i am not participating in the 100 Thing Challenge, but what struck me about this statement was the second sentence and what happened if you substituted "formal education" for "stuff." don't get me wrong. i like school. i think education is very important. i'm about to finish my phd and i like what i do. however, i have recently been confronted with the search for jobs--faculty positions, postdocs, etc and the fact that while there is a certain type of learning that happens in school, a type of learning of equal value happens outside of academia...or, i suppose, even in academia when you're not a formal student anymore. in other words, only taking classes cannot prepare you for your "dream life."

in academia, faculty are expected to conduct independent research and obtain grant funding. a phd is designed to train you to do this; however you are constantly under the supervision of your advisor(s). the first year or two of a faculty position will probably be accompanied by a very steep learning curve on what it actually means to be a professor, whether or not one starts said position with postdoc experience.

so i suppose the question is, what does "stuff" mean for us individually? is stuff physical stuff that keeps us buying new things and having to have a high-paying job we don't enjoy so we can buy and maintain all that stuff? or is stuff extra degrees we don't really need in order to be able to do what we want and that take our time and money when we could be spending those resources elsewhere?

paperwhites

2011-01-05T19:31:00.000-06:00

our apartment complex gave us paperwhites for a holiday gift this year. when we got back after travelling there was a small glass bowl with the bulb in it. it had only a small green sprout. it was supposed to take 4 - 6 weeks to bloom, but our little plant shot up and started blooming in the last couple days. the flowers are small but gorgeous.

service

2011-01-03T09:23:00.002-06:00

You never know when someone
May catch a dream for you
You never know when a little word
Or something you may do
May open up the windows
Of a mind that seeks the light
The way you live may not matter at all,
But you never know--it might.

And just in case it could be
That another's life, through you,
Might possibly change for the better
With a broader and brighter view,
It seems it might be worth a try
At pointing the way to the right
Of course, it may not matter at all,
But then again--it might.

--Helen Lowrie Marshall

thoughts on new years

2010-12-31T19:21:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-12-04T19:01:00.000-06:00

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

2010-12-03T17:34:00.002-06:00

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

2010-11-21T17:47:00.000-06:00

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!

2010-11-18T09:22:00.002-06:00

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

2010-11-10T10:56:00.002-06:00

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

2010-11-10T06:45:00.002-06:00

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

2010-11-02T09:50:00.003-05:00

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

2010-11-01T20:29:00.000-05:00

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?

2010-10-26T09:20:00.002-05:00

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...

2010-10-22T08:49:00.002-05:00

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

2010-10-12T14:53:00.002-05:00

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

2010-10-05T09:28:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-28T20:25:00.003-05:00

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

2010-09-27T08:29:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-21T21:53:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-19T09:49:00.000-05:00

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!

2010-09-13T13:02:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-09T13:01:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-07T09:09:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-02T09:13:00.009-05:00

'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

2010-09-01T12:39:00.003-05:00

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

2010-08-29T16:59:00.004-05:00

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

2010-08-27T20:42:00.002-05:00

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

2010-08-26T15:31:00.003-05:00

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

2010-08-18T19:52:00.003-05:00

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

2010-07-29T15:37:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-26T11:52:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-14T09:07:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-08T13:40:00.002-05:00

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!

2010-07-04T19:45:00.004-05:00

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

2010-06-27T20:32:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-20T20:05:00.005-05:00

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

2010-06-16T14:06:00.003-05:00

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

2010-06-12T23:07:00.003-05:00

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?!

2010-06-10T14:20:00.002-05:00

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

2010-06-08T11:21:00.002-05:00

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

2010-05-25T18:52:00.004-05:00

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

2010-05-19T15:12:00.003-05:00

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!

2010-04-30T18:39:00.002-05:00

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!

2010-04-19T20:09:00.002-05:00

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

2010-04-12T14:33:00.002-05:00

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!

2010-04-05T13:02:00.004-05:00

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?

2010-04-01T10:10:00.003-05:00

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

2010-03-30T16:06:00.003-05:00

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

2010-03-29T13:31:00.003-05:00

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

2010-03-25T21:12:00.010-05:00

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.

kehau and jason's wedding

2010-03-09T20:51:00.008-06:00

last thursday i traveled to salt lake city, ut for the wedding of my good friends kehau and jason.
i had a blast helping out and meeting their families and just generally enjoying the festivities. here are some of the highlights:

kehau is from maui and had never seen snow falling from the sky before...
lucky for her the temperature on thursday went from really warm to winter wonderland, which continued through friday morning. we had to clear snow off the car (in case that wasn't obvious).

fortunately the sun came out friday afternoon and it warmed up a tad.
this is the slc temple where kehau and jason were married.

kehau and jason coming out of the temple...looking good as per usual.

i got to see lori and meet her husband james. so good to catch up with old friends!

jason and kehau chose to share their wedding day with jason's grandparents. it was their 62nd wedding anniversary. they are both in their late 80s but i never would have guessed had i not been told. i am so glad i got to meet them--they are so cool!

kehau forgot to throw her bouquet at the wedding luncheon...
she and jason both wanted to just hand it to me. instead we stuck with tradition
and kehau tossed it to me from the front seat of the car.
her flowers were beautiful.

i made it back to austin late sunday afternoon after a side trip to montrose, co because of the denver airport being temporarily shut down due to bad visibility. the line at the customer service desk was probably 0.25 miles long because of all the people who had missed their connecting flights. when i finally did get to denver, a quick phone call and talk to a random agent, informed me that my connecting flight had been delayed 3 hours and that i could still board if i sprinted back down the terminal. awesome.

spring break starts at the end of this week. this week is super busy and it already seems to be flying. eric and i leave for san francisco one week from today to spend spring break hopefully doing all the things we didn't get to do the last time we were there because we were sick.

passport

2010-03-01T09:50:00.004-06:00

you can eat bbq on a stick (or bone) at the salt lick

my irish passport arrived last week. i can now officially travel in europe with it...not that i'm planning a trip anywhere in the near future. work has been bogging me down. this whole ta-ing thing is turning out to be a lot of work. the professor, who is new, almost broke down in tears in front of the other ta and me on friday after reading the mid-semester feedback her students had given her. i'm not sure that flat out saying the instructor is inhibiting your learning is the most tactful way to tell a professor to step it up a bit. suffice it to say, the reviews were brutal.

the other ta is from india and after listening to some of the reviews he made a really interesting comment. he said that where he went to school, they definitely wanted and requested student feedback, but that to say some of the things the students here said would have just been considered over the top disrespectful. the reason i found this so interesting was that a professor in the oceanography department at uh had posted an article a few years ago about how students today feel a sense of entitlement, even when they (the students) clearly don't know what they're doing (i.e. they expect more credit on exams for "trying" despite not being able to solve the problems and/or writing down incorrect equations). the students in the class i am currently ta-ing will give harsh reviews and say they don't know what's going on, and yet, they're not coming into office hours, frequently it seems like they're not even trying to read the book (which is terrible, but you can still glean some useful information out of it) or emailing the tas or the professor with questions. they just expect to be able to sit passively in lecture and "get it." last time i checked, learning didn't work that way. then again, i'm "old" now, so what do i know.

on a completely different note, saturday eric and i got a group together to go to the salt lick for bbq (pictures to come). i went as a designated driver so that when people were uncomfortably full afterward they didn't have to think (or drive). afterward we stopped at whole foods so i could grab something and then went over to carrie and julie's house for the end of a party and so that i could crash. my house party was this weekend and i had a feeling that i just shouldn't go, hence staying at friends' house. well, sunday afternoon my housemates told me they were glad i didn't go (for my own sake). apparently they had to kick a bunch of people out among other things, the dj was terrible and there were various other mishaps. funny how things work out.

my students had an exam on friday, which means office hours this morning have been spent bonding with my laptop and updating my blog. i could get used to this. thursday morning bright and early i'm leaving for utah for kehau and jason's wedding. fortunately, they didn't have to evacuate this weekend during the tsunami warning, but i'm sure it was a bit stressful trying to wrap up last minute details for this week while making sure everything is in order at home in case of water!

happy first week of march everyone!

busy update

2010-02-24T10:57:00.002-06:00

matt has been here and left. it was nice to see him for a few days, and he conveniently left right when the weather started to get really yucky.

some of the biggest puffiest snowflakes i've ever seen fell here in austin yesterday. pretty cool.

i presented at lab meeting on monday during which time my advisor and old boss were making suggestions for other things i should do with the data. after the meeting my advisor stayed to talk to me for a bit about it (nothing bad). it was rather amusing though when at one point he got this very concerned look on his face and said i am a little worried about how much you have on your plate right now [at work], but there doesn't seem to be anything you can just stop doing. i have to say its kind of a relief to get to a point where your advisor acknowledges how much you're actually doing.

happy belated valentine's day!

2010-02-15T10:49:00.002-06:00

eric gave me a red rose for valentine's day.
its beautiful and very special.
he got it when he was stationed in the philippines
many years ago.
it reminds me of the little prince,
who we read about together earlier this year.

i think i'm ready for lent to begin.
i think i had too many valentine's
day treats, delicious though they were.

matt comes later this week.
i am excited to see him!

kids in the lab

2010-02-09T15:49:00.004-06:00

yesterday was one of those fantastic days where you managed to be super productive and smiling despite the rain. we had about 20 kids, ages 4-early teens, come visit the lab. they were super excited to play with the markers and check out how our motion capture cameras work. it is so much fun to able to share this stuff with them.

for them the kids, being in the lab and seeing what we were doing was kind of like watching video games. saturday night, eric and i and a bunch of our friends had actually headed to dave & buster's for a little gaming ourselves (pictures still need to be uploaded). i love skee ball.

i think i finally figured out what i was going to do race-wise this year. i'm thinking headlands 50-miler in early august followed by wasatch 100 in early september. i'm excited. i've been getting some barefoot run mileage in, but its so interesting because my calves are sore afterward, which didn't happen when i first started running in my vibrams. go figure.

in other news, i'm in the process of tracking down a house. i found a 6 bdrm duplex basically right across the street from where i currently live and a bunch of people from church are interested in renting it with me for next school year. keep you fingers cross that it works out!

slc

2010-02-01T14:31:00.003-06:00

last year i spent quite a bit of time in colorado.

this year i seem destined to spend a lot of time here:

jason's mom called the temple in salt lake city, ut a couple weeks ago, and they had an opening...so now instead of getting married in kona, my good friends kehau and jason are getting married in slc. why is this of note you may wonder? well, i had already bought my tickets for hawaii and called to tell kehau when i was coming in only to find out everything had changed super last minute.

so, i will now be in slc the first weekend in march to celebrate with kehau and jason. if you'll be in town for the festivities, let me know!

peanuts

2010-01-29T14:29:00.001-06:00

"Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and feet. It's also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed."

~Charlie Brown

african proverb

2010-01-28T18:07:00.002-06:00

when there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
~african proverb

i don't think i'm dealing with internal enemies at the moment, but the quote struck me for some reason so i thought i would share.

teaching, sunrises and the piano

2010-01-27T13:56:00.002-06:00

today i taught my first recitation! my biggest concern was that there wasn't a whiteboard in the room in which i was scheduled to teach. luckily i was able to track one down before class. call me old school, but i'm of the opinion that solving ordinary differential equations should not be taught, or reviewed as the case was, via powerpoint.

i've been getting up earlier and earlier lately, readjusting my body to being up before the sun. the past couple days i have been blessed with views of beautiful sunrises during my morning run. this morning i was out the door running a few minutes past 6a and was hoping to be on the mopac pedestrian bridge at the right time to get a good view...as it turned out today has been overcast, so there was no sunrise this morning. i am going to try and bring my camera with me, so i can share with you some of the beauty i've been seeing lately!

yesterday morning at 4a, i was unnaturally awakened by loud heavy metal music being played right outside my room. i eventually fell back asleep (after someone else had apparently knocked on his door and told him to turn it down), but was a little unsettled when i got up for real. after my run, i went across the street to the institute and, for the first time in 8 or more years, sat down at the piano. half an hour and a few hymns later, i was in a much better state. actually, i have been thinking i might just wander over there to play a couple days a week in the mornings before heading into work. by no means do i want to play in front of people anytime (there were awkward pauses to be had as i found the right keys), but i was surprised at how quickly playing music can come back to you. i didn't think i'd even be able to get something out that was recognizable!

teenage mutant ninja turtles

2010-01-24T16:38:00.004-06:00

i have had a lovely and very busy weekend. friday night some of my housemates, brooke, jason, eric and i went to a viewing of Fresh. its about local, sustainable food production. michael pollan, author of the ominvore's dilemma and in defense of food, among other things, is one of the people involved in the project. the movie was very good. i'd highly recommend it...that said, if you haven't done any research into how food gets to your table today, be prepared to change before you go see the movie...

after the movie, eric's new friend adam met up with us and eric, adam and i ventured to amy's for ice cream...but we ended up in whole foods, eating gelato, checking out the local selection of meat, fruits and vegetables and smelling all sorts of yummy spices.

vegan chocolate gelato...and eric's way too large pink sorbet!

adam just moved to austin from utah. he speaks spanish fluently and he likes gelato and organic food. i suspect he's going to fit in just fine.

yesterday i had my car reshod...the road feels a little different with new tires! after tires and a stop at the motorcycle shop, eric and i made our way to a park to play catch. when i was relating this story at church this morning, someone asked what catch was...i replied, you know, when you have mitts and you throw a softball at each other. i found the exchange kind of funny because i guess as we get older, we don't really take time out anymore to do things like play catch, unless we have a child with whom to play.

and speaking of things kids do, last night for dinner, eric and i had pizza...and then watched teenage mutant ninja turtles. yep, that's right, the one with real people that came out when we were about 10, or maybe younger. and you know what? its still as good as i remember it.

i'm currently reading fast food nation. its been on my list of books to read for years and while some of the information in it i have heard before from other things i've read, its still enlightening (disturbing?) to see how advertising basically infiltrates everything we do these days. crazy.

where is time going?

2010-01-21T11:47:00.002-06:00

i find time passing by very quickly these days. the new semester has just started and despite being done with classes, it still looks like its going to be a busy month. work has been pretty crazy to the point that when i get home at night i just want to sit and do nothing because my brain is fried. while sometimes this is a very satisfying feeling, other times its downright frustrating as i have other commitments most evenings, so i still have to be functioning. i happen to be dating one of the most patient people i've ever met who is happy to agree when i inform him i'm cranky and then we move on to whatever needs to be done or wherever we need to go next. i'm realizing that trying to balance all of this and find peace amidst the business will likely be very useful in the future if i have kids and get home from work and still have to be going full steam ahead.

i got an email last week indicating that my manuscript is "acceptable pending a few minor revisions," which is very exciting. i have most of the edits done and am just waiting on input from my co-authors for the rest. in other work news, i got to take apart a $10k treadmill earlier this week and re-configure it in a way that i can use it in our lab. its very empowering to be able to take stuff apart, figure out which wires are going where, which ones you do or don't need and then be able to hook it all back up and make it *gasp* work!

last thursday eric and i started our sign language class, and tonight we have class #2. its a lot of fun. the teacher is deaf, so the entire class is taught in sign or by writing a few things on the board. its amazing how much more attention you pay to body language when no spoken language with all its intonation is being conveyed.

i'm still trying to figure out spring break...i was supposed to go to hawaii for my friend's wedding on 3/6. i bought the tickets, and then yesterday found out that two weeks ago she changed the location (to slc) and hadn't informed everyone yet. so now i have a plane ticket to hawaii but she's not going to be there. my spring break is about a week after the wedding along with her reception on maui, so i'm thinking i might just push the tickets back and spend a week and a half in hawaii instead of a few days. part of my soul is longing for the peace that i have always found in the islands.

in running news, i'm finally back up and moving! i took my vibram's out for a 6-miler on tuesday...when i did this back in california, i had no problem. this time however my calves have suddenly become tight, and i'm wondering if its because about half of the run this time was on asphalt as opposed to less than a mile of the run being asphalt at my parents house. hmmmm. i'm still working on my race calendar for this year. unfortunately its looking like leadville isn't going to happen because i'm supposed to be in rhode island that weekend for a conference for work. i'm thinking headlands 100 instead, which is in early august in california...at least that way i can train with my friends who are racing 100s in late summer. i'll keep you posted!

now that the daily grind is back and i'm not traveling for a month or so, i should have more regular blog updates again.

back in austin!

2010-01-09T20:46:00.003-06:00

too many things have happened in the last two weeks to do a detailed re-cap. suffice it to say that i enjoyed the rest of my time in california with my family. utah was great (but FREEZING). we spent new year's eve in temple square listening to music and checking out the lights. it was beautiful. new year's day and several days in at the beginning of the new year had me enjoying trail running in the snow in the foothills (?) of the wasatch mountains. last monday we went skiing at powder mountain.

wednesday i left utah only to be stuck in the denver airport for four hours. it was snowing and cold there too. i finished a book though and finally arrived back in austin during the wee hours of thursday morning.

since then i've been going full steam trying to get things done. a fellowship application was due yesterday and a grant application is due this coming tuesday. luckily i'm waiting for my advisor's input on my draft at this point so i could afford to do other things today. for example, i had a trainer date with michelle and ali. it was too cold outside to ride bikes, so we just rode them inside. it was nice to be on a bike again.

i've gotten pictures framed, thank you notes written, lots of clothes ready to be donated and thrown out lots of stuff that was taking up space. i'm glad to be doing stuff again. lots has been running through my head and its nice to be able to work.

riverdance

2009-12-24T16:24:00.002-06:00

my parents and i went to see riverdance last night.
i'm a fan of the really high energy sections of the
dance and the guy that plays the fiddle.
he was impressive.

i've now been out on a few runs successfully.
its 60 here today.
it feels amazing to be outside and
actually be able to enjoy the weather.

that said, its weird that its christmas eve
and not cold and snowing.
i'm not sure how i feel about that.
i'm sure i'll get over it though when
i go layout suntanning tomorrow (joking).

i just made hummus from scratch and
am now watching my mom bake a pie
from scratch.
tomorrow i'm going to try blueberry pancakes
also from scratch...mmmm.
i'm enjoying this vacation
cooking thing.

merry christmas eve all!

break!

2009-12-21T22:28:00.002-06:00

eric and i went to visit the trail of lights the night before i left (and he was supposed to leave) austin for winter break. it was cold. it felt like winter. i approve.

this whole sickness thing took a comically bad turn this morning. after the flu, bronchitis and a sinus infection, i broke out in hives on friday on my ankles...and this morning on my whole body. turns out i might have become allergic to penicillin. the positive side of all this is that i don't have to take the antibiotics anymore.

either way, i am feeling much better. this morning i went out on a 10 or 11 mile walk. it felt amazing. i was only going to go out for an hour or so, but i was enjoying being outside so much i just kind of kept going. it was quite relaxing....and a nice break from trying to walk around stores and the mall. i already knew i liked shopping online, but my recent trips to the mall have confirmed my appreciation for it.

i've been experimenting with vegan cooking the last couple days. i found a good recipe for portobello, artichoke, sundried tomato risotto. and i tried a recipe for mac and cheese, but i have to say, the real thing is better. i did get to learn a little bit about nutritional yeast though. even if i never use it again, its fun to experiment with new things in the kitchen, and i'm really enjoying the opportunity to cook again.

all of this time away from work has actually been making me miss it. today while i was walking, i found myself pondering how dogs walk. i was observing the wet paw marks on a section of pavement and the pattern was really interesting. in terms of spacing in the horizontal plane, dogs steps seem similar to humans except that for everyone one human print, there would be two paw prints in the same location because of the way dogs coordinate their legs during walking. doing some comparative gait analysis in the future would be cool.

sinus infection

2009-12-12T13:44:00.001-06:00

well folks, we seem to be getting somewhere. after all that time spent outside walking to/from my exam yesterday (that would be sarcasm), i managed to start running a fever and make my cough really bad again. i went into the emergency clinic today (it was closed last night) and the doctor informed me that my lungs sounded fine but that i appeared to have a sinus infection. she gave me antibiotics. maybe now i'll start making some progress? keep your fingers crossed!

still sick

2009-12-11T16:16:00.002-06:00

turns out i'm still sick.
eric brought me flowers earlier this week.
and then sat with me every day this week while we studied
to make sure i drank fluids.
he's swell.
i lost my voice on wednesday and still haven't
quite got it back yet. but i'm doing better.

i had my only final today.
i am now done with classes for
my phd.
i think the exam went well. hopefully i'll
find out soon.

i haven't run in a week.
its pretty amazing to watch your muscles
atrophy is so short a time period. boo.
now its time to really focus
on getting healthy.

happy rest of finals week all!
may health and brain power
be with you!

lack of motion blues

2009-12-04T11:00:00.003-06:00

this is what my morning felt like.

it was supposed to snow here in austin this morning. i woke up to find that the heater had turned off and our house was cold. i went running (i would have done that even if the heater was on, but i digress). and actually, i am now sad that i didn't stay out longer. i'm acutely feeling the affects of not running much for the last week and a half. i get sad and start longing for fresh air regardless of how cold said air is. i know its weird but its as though something is missig from my life...because in fact it is missing from my life. i may just have to go running again this afternoon.

tonight is the stake christmas party, which means i get to listen to christmas music!

i hate being sick

2009-12-02T10:01:00.002-06:00

so i finally went to the doctor yesterday and he said i had some sort of post-flu bronchial inflammation or something like that. i ran a few miles on monday morning and thought i was going to hack up a lung afterward, and i ran a few miles this morning...but otherwise, i haven't really done anything since thanksgiving day. and now its messing with my body.

i've always heard people say that when they start working out they feel like they eat all the time. well, i consider that normal. my appetite has died in the last week and its rather disorienting. that and i'm definitely starting to notice the lack of active meditation time in my life. it makes me grumpy.

on a brighter note, i have recently gotten more sleep in one night than i did in three nights earlier this semester. and my lungs and cough are starting to feel a bit better. ironically all of this combined with having had unstructured training this semester has made me itchy to race again. and its made me very itchy to be back on the trails.

on success

2009-12-01T15:54:00.001-06:00

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

thanksgiving in sf

2009-11-30T18:49:00.008-06:00

dad took the day before thanksgiving off to hang out with his kids. as eric and i were the only individual meeting the criteria at the house at that point, we took dad on a trip up mt. diablo.

at the top, eric and i got into a fight. it wasn't pretty.

but we made up.
then eric decided it would be fun to wear women's sunglasses. he let me borrow his visor in return.

thanksgiving morning we did a turkey trot of sorts. here's the crowd at the start. the competition was stiff. eric almost killed afterward, but he had agreed to "picking up the pace" so there's not much he could do. chris and julia won by quite a bit. dad did a pretty stellar job considering his minimalist training schedule heading into the race.

the family (and soon to be family) was all in sf for thanksgiving next year. my friend nicole and my parents' friend lisa also joined us. fortunately the noobs were a little slow on the uptake of the take-some-and-pass procedure around the table, but they caught on quickly. eventually everyone was stuffed and napping.

i started running a fever of over 100 degrees before we commenced eating. by friday morning it was up to 101 degrees. fortunately eric got sick too so we got to spend the day being sick together. my fever went down temporarily and we made it into berkeley to eat at my favorite restaurant (cafe gratitude) and meet up with anthony for a few minutes.

on the way home (sort of) we stopped to see the oakland temple. it was dark, so the picture isn't particularly breathtaking, but if you get a chance to see it in person at night or during the data, its beautiful.

we got back to austin saturday night. i still have a pretty nasty cough and i'm keeping my fingers crossed that its not bronchitis. illness aside, i had a pretty stellar weekend.

this week is the last week of classes. i'm focused on getting done with my class and getting healthy. i tried running today for the first time since thanksgiving day. unfortunately a cold front rolled in last night though, which meant my lungs were not having it. i hate being sick. it happens so infrequently that i'm not very good at dealing with it. bleh.

hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving!

passed!

2009-11-16T13:52:00.002-06:00

i passed my qualifying exams last thursday. its been kind of surreal. i'm glad to have that hurdle out of the way though. i actually got 8 hours of sleep for the first time in a couple months on thursday night.

friday night, brooke, jason, eric and i went out to dinner and then wandered around south congress. brooke and jason showed us this neat little hotel that was nest in a neighborhood a block off of congress. we walked onto the grounds and there was an amazing calm there. experiences like this seem to abound in austin. there are all sorts of gems to explore around every corner. before we went home we stopped at the cupcake trailer (on s. congres), bought cupcakes and then sat and listened to bluegrass. it was a very enjoyable "austin" evening.

apparently people don't like running with me. they tend to come running with me once and say they're find...and then later i find out they call it a death run. well, two weekends ago eric came out running with me, called it a death run and then i just assumed that was the end of it. until friday night, he made a comment to the effect of 'after we go running tomorrow...' that just about blew me out of the water. so he came running with me again this past weekend, this time for a little longer. i've never had someone come running with me repeatedly like this. its fun.

later saturday afternoon, i got to experience ikea for the first time. its kind of neat how they lay out all the show rooms/kitchens/etc. i definitely recommend allowing a decent amount of time to take it all in though. the store is huge!

i have my last mid-term tomorrow. back to studying for me.

canoeing and the cathedral of junk

2009-11-09T15:06:00.007-06:00

meet eric

dart, me and eric taking town lake by canoe

eric and i in the cathedral of junk

boys are good at making lots of noise

the cathedral of junk is multi-storied in more ways than one

the main entrance

saturday was a beautiful day for these adventures. its been crunch time in my world lately, hence the lack of posts. my proposal defense is on thursday. aaahhh!

pd day

2009-10-21T10:38:00.002-05:00

yesterday i confirmed my proposal defense day. its going to be 11/12 from 4:30 to 6:30p. i'm not sure its fully hit me yet though. i decided to leave my program in hawaii before i got to the point of scheduling my actual defense, so i'm starting to tread in unknown waters, which is kind of exciting. if i pass, i will officially be abd (all but the dissertation). if i don't pass, i'll probably have to write a new proposal and/or take another class (noooo!). we'll see how it goes.

if it was possible to be on cloud ten (the one that comes after cloud nine), i think that would be what i'm on right now. school is good. dhaus is good. church is good. running is good. and i made a new friend named eric and he is great.

everything's amazing, nobody's happy

2009-10-14T10:51:00.002-05:00

several people posted a video with the above title on facebook recently and i appreciated it, so i thought i'd share it here.

my last committee member confirmed that she'd serve on my dissertation. i'm now trying to find a date in early november that will work for everyone. i'm pretty excited to get my proposal defense done as it's the last major hurdle i have to jump through other than actually defending my dissertation itself.

my toe is feeling better. we had the haus cleanup day for my co-op last saturday and jack, emily and i dropped the island that's in our kitchen onto my toe. oops. i've never broken anything but it sure felt like my toe was broken. it hurt so bad. fortunately however, i can still run on it and the bruising is going away. i don't think i'll be sporting my sweet new 3" heels anytime soon though.

i'm excited for this weekend, and yes, i'm aware that it is only wednesday morning. happy middle of the week all!