laser pointer

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

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

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

choir practice

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

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

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

grandma's china

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

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

baddest badass

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

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

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

i can see...fire?!

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

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

on the bike again

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

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

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

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