ants!

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

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

35 minutes

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

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

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

happy cycling, running and eating everyone!

digital vacation

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

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

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

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

stillness and movement

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

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

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

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

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

on being young

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

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

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

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

hibiscus

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

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

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

till one day it cracks them open

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

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