- Why do marathoners sometimes run themselves into the ground, literally, in trying to finish the race, and
- Why do track runners always seem to be vomiting after their race?
I suppose both of these could be rephrased as, "Why are runners such idiots?"
As I started training for marathons, I began to understand the first. "Mind over matter" isn't just a catchy phrase, it's actually how you get yourself from the start line to the finish in an endurance race. And once you become accustomed to ignoring the fake complaints your body manufactures (and it can manufacture a LOT of them - it used to take me around 4 miles before the phantom aches, pains, itches, and twitchy feelings would stop), it becomes possible to ignore things that are real. And when you're training for a marathon, especially an important one (with a time goal or a goal of finishing), you have to really, really, want it to put up with the time investment required to get there. I've only once run when I shouldn't have -- when I sprained my ankle and then ran 4 miles on it, and I literally didn't notice I was hurt until I had finished the race.
( If you're eating, or have a queasy stomach, best skip right past this next part... )
But I get it now. It was worth that 2 minutes of discomfort to me to chop an astonishing 1 minute per mile off my pace, or about 6 minutes off my total time. (For context, the difference between the first place woman and the second place woman is 15 seconds. Minutes are a big deal in a 10K.) I finished in 61:22. My previous time on the same course was 67:32,and the 10Ks prior to that were 69:20 and 70:50. Next year I want to break the one hour mark.
I actually don't remember much of the race itself since so much of my racing time was consumed with checking my watch to make sure I was on the paces Jeff had set for me. (Random aside: Having an awesome, dedicated coach like my husband has totally helped my running. If I weren't married to him, I'd pay dearly to get the type of coaching he gives me for free.) Early in the race, I kept slowing myself down, and the last two miles, I was trying to keep my pace at anything that was under 10 minutes a mile. For the final half mile, my goal was to pass as many people in front of me as I could. I got to 10. Unfortunately, none of those was Zach, who blew my time away by about 10 seconds. (Seriously, though - congrats, Zach - you ran a great race.)
Anyhow, a fantastic day - next week is back to marathon training with a 20 miler, where my first hour of running will cover one mile less than today's running did.
- Mood:
accomplished
1. Get a picture of me and the Tardis ( Yay, Cardiff!)
2. Sketching from one of the plaster casts or sculptures at the V&A (Victoria and Albert museum, to those of you who are not trying to pretend to be Londoners)
Oh, Victoria and Albert musem, let me count the ways I love you. You're free, you have rooms upon rooms upon rooms of Cool and Random Stuff (an entire four galleries devoted to forged iron work - gates, poles and the like!), you let me take as many flash photos as I want, you provide stools for me to sit on so that I can sketch in comfort... On a second thought, I don't want to be here all day typing everything I love about the museum. Suffice to say that I think it just might be my favoritest museum in the entire world, and I still haven't even been in all of the rooms.
Today I jilted Cardiff and ran back to my true love, London. (Erm, I mean my true love if I'm talking about cities, not you, Jeff, if you're reading this.) Immediately upon arriving, I dumped my bags and rushed to "my museum", intent upon finding the perfect plaster cast to draw. Sadly, the room with all the human figures was closed. However, the ginormous figure of Michelangelo's David was clearly visible and his head was at eye level from the balcony, so I settled down to draw him. I caught some of the likeness, but it wasn't perfect; I'd rate it a C. Still, I had a blast, was photographed by multiple other tourists as part of the "color" of the gallery, and David was a champ and didn't fidget a bit while I was drawing him.
When I finished, I wandered around some of the galleries, noted that the European sculpture room had another hundred or so additional willing models who would stand still for as long as I needed them to (did I mention that I LOVE this museum?) and giggled over the fact that there were tins of digestives on display in another room.
Photos available on Facebook, beginning here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
- Location:United Kingdom, London
- Mood:
happy
Today was St Fagans, an open-air museum wherein the Welsh have hauled up all manner of old buildings, arranged them prettily in a 100-acre plot, scattered the rest of the space with livestock, gardens, and nice paths for humans, and then let anyone in free who wants to be let in. It's sort of part park, part museum. Quite nice, if a bit random at times.
Followers of Jonobie's dorkiness scale should know that the scales dipped today, but did not fall to zero on account of the fact that part of the reason for the St Fagans trip was that it was the filming site of one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, Human Nature. So, if you're wondering, yes, Jonobie is still a nerdy dork.
Pictures from "the lost day" when I didn't have internet access can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
If you want to jump directly to today's pictures, see here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
This evening, I was pretty tired and wanted to go someplace to eat that met two requirements: One, that it let me in without pre-calling for a booking, and two, that it be relatively quiet. The first two places I looked in were madhouses (apparently everyone in Cardiff eats out on Saturday night), so I kept walking until I finally found what looked like a Cafe that was only half full. Without looking at the name or menu, I strolled in and asked for a table.
It was only after sitting down that I realized I was surrounded by Americana, the menu in front of me was full of burgers, and the waitress is both surprised and unnerved by my accent. (I definitely get "noticed" here when I talk far more than I ever did in London -- many tour guides seem both surprised and happy that I've come from so far away to see Wales. But this is the first time someone seemed fluttery or nervous around me because of my accent.) Yes, I somehow managed as an American in Cardiff to find what is probably the only American restaurant in Cardiff. Go figure. I then noticed that the place was called a "Diner" (though no Diner I've ever been in sports flowered tablecloths or takes reservations.)
Of course, one's native cuisine viewed through another culture's eyes is rarely quite like it is at home. I decided immediately that I was going to go for a veggie burger, as I've been feeling a bit meat-heavy. Thus decided, I ordered a garlic-mayo veggie burger and some onion rings, and waited to see what I'd get.
First up, a knife and fork arrives. I have no idea if this is intended for the burger or not, as no one near me is eating yet. I decide that as an American in an American restaurant abroad, I am uniquely qualified to eat with my hands. Then some sort of weird condiment tray arrives. I identify the red stuff as ketchup, although it seems to have onions and relish in it, but the yellow stuff has me flummoxed. It's not mustard, I think, as it has CORN in it. Lots of corn. And kind of a vinegary taste. It's not bad, but I don't know what you do with it. I stare at it for a while, dip my onion rings (good, though more batter than I'm used to) in the ketchup and munch away.
I then notice that most of the diners around me are drinking tea or a glass of wine with their burgers. I nearly burst out laughing, because this is such an odd-looking combo. But it makes sense; people here often seem to drink wine with dinner (it's about as common as beer), and in my experience, beverages are the things people tend to keep the same, regardless of cuisine. I notice they have Dr. Pepper in the case (wow, haven't EVER seen that over here before) and get some of that. It's made with sugar instead of corn syrup. Yum.
Then my burger arrives. It is, well, literally, a garlic-mayo burger. There is so much mayo on top of the burger that I can't see the actual patty. After I scrape about 3T off of it, it looks normal again; a taste of the mayo reveals that it is indeed garlicky and yummy. The problem comes when I want to put the stuff on the side on the burger. There is lettuce, which is good, but the tomatoes are ... wedges. Not exactly useful for putting on the burger. There are also cucumber slices, which I assume is because this is a veggie burger, not because someone's confused the tomatoes with the cucumbers. All up, it tastes good, though I would have preferred some tomato.
When I paid and left, I noticed that this is the one place I've been where the service fee is not included with the meal -- they mention this in big letters on the menu. Odd that of American customs, this is one they decided to keep. Anyhow, a fun trip.
After that long day, I had a really nice (and inexpensive!) pasta Arrabiata at an Italian place up the street, called Cibo. My feet are totally exhausted!
I don't mind, though. It's actually quite cozy and I knew what I was getting when I booked it. It's a nice place - clean, friendly owners, £60 per night and best of all, in an area I'm now quite familiar with, and two blocks away from Paddington. In other words, a steal for the location.
My first order of the day was to go for a run around Hyde Park. If you're one of the three followers of this blog, you might recall that last time I attempted this route, it took me an unexpected three hours on account of a tea detour midway through. This time, however, I managed to get through the run without any detours. However, having run by the Orangery, I decided I was in desperate need of a post-run scone, and so Zach and I started by eating breakfast there. Before going, I bought train tickets for Cardiff tomorrow, so I'm all set on that front. Yay!
After a leisurely breakfast, we went to the British Museum. This was my third time there, and I still think there may be rooms I've never set foot in. If I lived in London, I would declare one month of every year to be British Museum month, and go there every weekend until I at least saw all the rooms! (I announced this to Zach and pointed out that I would know everything by the time I finished. He seemed dubious.) This time, we rented the audio tour, which was quite good. There was a whole hour on the Elgin marbles, which was really nice. Since we only got there in the afternoon and lingered around the Egyptian and Greek rooms, we didn't finish the tour. Highlights this time for me were the astrolabe and "science equipment exhibit" in Room 1, seeing the world's oldest board game as graffiti on one of the other pieces, and an amazing blue glass vase from Roman times (the Portland Vase).
After the Museum, Zach and I went to The Victoria - a tavern near the hotel that I've tried to go to, unsuccessfully, twice before. (Both times, it was FAR too full to eat at.) The third time was the charm, though, and I had a quite lovely steak pie with a Fullers Chiswick bitter. The bitter was definitely different than any US beer; it wasn't ... carbonated (? is that the right word for the bubbles in beer?) at all. Interesting, though I'd probably try something different later.
Back in my room now, with a bathroom full of laundry (running really made the laundry situation get out of hand, prior to that I was totally on top of it). I'd take a picture, but I will maintain my vow of last trip to avoid resorting to pictures of my small clothes to gain and retain readership.
Photos from today begin here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
- Mood:
sleepy
Highlights of the day included the Blue Lagoon, an amazing spa and freaky-milky-blue-pool-set-in-a-moonscap
After that, we returned the car, went to the Reykjavik airport (on the ONLY sunny day we've seen since we've been here, I might add - boo!) and then flew to London. London was, unsurprisingly, rainy. It was nice, though, because I knew exactly where the B&B was (as it's the same one Camille and I stayed in before) and could navigate quickly to a decent food area nearby.
Day 3 pictures begin here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
Tomorrow is day one in LONDON! Yay!
- Location:London
I learned a lot today:
- Reykjavik traffic engineers apparently think that roundabouts on the highway are an acceptable form of traffic control and save money on exits. Lemme tell you, whipping around a roundabout in the middle of an otherwise divided highway is a bizarre experience. Especially when it happens every 3-400 meters.
- GPS units should probably stay with the vehicle they are rented with. In particular, GPS systems used with vehicles that have tires up to Zach's waist should not be rented with little Ford cars without resetting their settings.
- Without tires up to Zach's waist, "shortest route" is rarely the quickest route in Iceland. Though sometimes it is a mighty fun route.
- If Chicago is correctly called the windy city, Iceland needs to be named "the hurricane continent".
- To quote Zach, the weather here is like a DM rolling a d20 on the weather chart with a new roll every 15 minutes. Rain, partly cloudy, and gale-force winds occur in all possible combinations and change regularly.
- I am really glad I packed my coat. I nearly didn't, because Reykjavik is about 10 degrees cooler than Seattle, and I'd been fine without. But wind, rain, and chilly weather means I was actually slightly cold today even with the jacket and hat.
We saw a lot of amazing scenery today, including:
- Þingvallavatn/Alþingi (Thingvallavatn/Althing)
- Rushhour in Iceland (twice!)
- Strokkur and other thermal features
- Some crazy stuff our map called a "road", and
- Gullfoss
Want the full story? Available through captioning at Facebook (finally started working again), starting here. Zach's photos on Facebook can be found here - he's also putting the full set up on Flickr.
We ended the day by eating dinner at a Cafe in Reykjavik - a stew made with Icelandic lamb. Yum!
- Mood: happy
Today was mostly spent wandering around Reykjavik and drinking coffee to wake up. The early morning was quite quiet - not too many people on the streets at 8AM on a Sunday. By noon things had picked up a bit and we could get into our rooms (YAY, shower!). Interestingly, the hot water here is drilled for and I think is centrally provided - it can reach up to 185 degrees out of the tap! It also smells sulfurous, which is odd to catch a whiff of in my hair every so often.
After putting stuff in our rooms and showering, we went to a local Danish "open-faced sandwich shop" and got fish on a super grainy bread (no wheat in it, I think) with mustard, lox, and roe on top. Quite tasty. Afterwards we went to the culture museum, which was so-so. They had several medieval manuscripts of the Eddas, which were quite interesting, and a "natural history" section which was primarily Victorian-era taxidermy (interesting, though odd), and a film exhibit that was rather plain.
[Addendum: We went to Icelandic Fish and Chips for dinner and although they initially goofed our order by forgetting to fill it, they plied us with so much stuff that I nearly felt embarrassed by the end. I got a free Malt Extract beverage (like nothing I've had before, and not worth getting again), Zach got a free fruit drink, we both got free onion rings, which were by far THE BEST onion rings I've ever had (they used flake sea salt to season them and a lot of grease, which might be the trick), free herbal tea at the end, and were offered free dessert but were just way too full. Our meal, which incidentally was also good, was essentially fish and chips on top of salad.]
Pictures and commentary are available on Facebook, here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2
- Mood:
tired
Hope you receive this message!!!
On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Michael Jackson. I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter were returned undelivered. I wish to notify you that late King of Pop. Michael Jackson made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Five Million, Dollars (USD$5,000.000.00) to you in the Codicil and last testament to his WILL. This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being widely entertainer, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous fans abroad who wished you good.
I'm sure they just mixed me up with another Jonobie, though, one who is a super fan and longtime friend of the King of Pop. Too bad she didn't get this email so she could claim her money.
I wore my GPS again this year and have the goofy route of a runner mapped out below. Last year I ran an hour longer and an additional 5 miles. Some of this just meant I was more efficient in my route (I essentially made only one loop per half, instead of several). But I also felt really slow in finding stamps and was unable to get all of the first half stamps before reaching the second half, where they're worth fewer points. I probably should have started running a half hour or so earlier.
The route (10.3 miles, click for big):
New running challenges this year included:
- A record high of 89 degrees (this hit me harder than expected; I tried to do a sprint at the end, ran out of gas, forced myself to keep going and then very nearly threw up on the official iPhone timekeeping device)
- Three separate times when I stumbled from fatigue and feared that I'd sprained my right ankle (never did, thankfully)
- Being attacked by a dog enroute (yes, really! Someone was walking their dog, and it got excited as I ran past and nipped at me)
Honestly, the hardest thing is having to wait another WHOLE YEAR for a chance at redemption!
- Mood:
blah
With one notable exception, pretty much every sentence that I had growing up that began with "I've always wished I could..." has been done or is in-progress. Not that I don't have new dreams popping up all the time, but it's pretty cool to reflect back and realize how lucky I've been for where I am in life.
Some (non-exhaustive) examples:
- "I've always wished I could travel Europe with one of my college buddies." Done, spent time with Camille in London in an absolutely fabulous trip.
- "I've always wished I could learn to draw." Not done yet, but registered for a Drawing 101 class this summer at a local community college.
- "I always wished I could go somewhere fabulous on vacation with a lover." Done, Jeff and I went to Lisbon when we lived in Austin, he took me to Hawaii a couple of years ago, and we're planning to go to the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.
- "I've always wished I could find something related to Computer Science that wasn't coding that I could make a living at." Done, I love my job as a Content Publishing Manager at Microsoft. (It's telling that unlike some years past, I can no longer think of jobs I'd rather be doing.)
- "I've always wished I could have cats of my own." Easily done, once I was out of college.
- "I've always wished I could have painted walls." Done, now that Jeff and I have painted our bedroom, bathroom & living room.
- "I've always wished I could go on a yoga retreat." Done, went to Yelapa, Mexico a few years ago. By myself, which was a huge confidence-builder. Fantastic trip.
- "I've always wished I could leave near a really cool city where public transportation was readily available." Done, Seattle is fun and easily accessible by bus from where I live. (OK, I think the original version of this required a subway and me living in a downtown condo, but I've mostly gotten over that.)
The one exception? I always wished I could go into space. Maybe someday there will be space tourism for more than the super-fantastically wealthy.
- Mood:
cheerful
When I was quite young, my parents still had an old black and white TV where we watched Star Trek. When my mother told me that they were buying a color TV, I was confused because I was absolutely convinced that I could see color on the screen. What follows is the subsequent conversation, after I informed her of this:
Her: Ok, so what color is Spock's uniform?
Me: Gray.
Her: And Captain Kirk's?
Me: Dark gray!
Yesterday morning, while working on the New York Times crossword, the following conversation.
Me: Hmm, this clue says "Vulcans and Romulans" and is 5 letters, but nothing fits. I mean, "pointy-eared" is too long, "green-blooded" is even longer, and frankly, "common ancestor" is too much of a stretch.
Jeff: Hon, you're over-thinking it. What ARE they?
Me: Oh. Aliens. That's not right, Vulcans aren't alien!
- Mood:
amused
I've recently been gorging myself on stories - I'm about to go watch the Star Trek movie again, I've been gobbling up the new Dr. Who episodes, and I recently watched some of the original episodes of the Star Trek TV series again. All this made me think about what you can tell about a person based on their favorite characters or heroes.
Here are my five favorite characters (some fictional, some not), roughly in order of appearance into my life:
( Quick, can you guess any before continuing? )
This was a fun project - I started by tracing some monsters from the monster manual and looking online for sketches people had done of D&D monsters. These were used to create a set of cartoons for the embroidery, such as this one.
Once I had my cartoons, I traced the sketches onto the fabric using a washable ink pen. (A tablet PC works wonders as a lightbox for this part.) This project also taught me how to embroider in the corner of a fabric - once I'd situated the graphic on the edge of the napkin, I could no longer get the correct part of the fabric into the embroidery hoop. The solution is to baste muslin to the napkin fabric, cut a hole in the area behind the inked-on embroidery design, hoop the fabric and complete the embroidery, and then remove the basted-on fabric. I feel sorta foolish that I had to look this up in an embroidery book to figure out, as it was rather obvious once I saw it.
And here's the final result.
For the slightly-less nerdy among you who need identification of the monsters, they are, starting in the upper left and working clockwise: Violet fungi, Owlbear, Roper, Red Dragon, Umberhulk, Rust monster, Beholder, Gelatinous cube
I think my favorites are the Violet fungi and the Roper (lesson learned: embroidery works really well for tentacles), though the severed hand coming out of the Gelatinous cube gives me a giggle every time I look at it.
For more pictures of the pre-embroidery cartoons, see here.
I unfortunately tried something new on my watch without testing it, so didn't get my timer going until approximately 50 seconds after the start. Next time I'll remember the adage of "Nothing new on race day" and try it first.
I ran the race with
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zml, and he has an excellent writeup of the joys (and non-joys!) of the hills and the flavor of the race - enough that I'm going to be astonishingly lazy and just point to him instead of writing my own. It was a lot of fun running with him, and there's no way I would have kept up my speed so much on the final hill if it weren't for my competitive streak being unwilling to let him get too far away from me. (One of the magazines given out at the race has an intro that talks about how racing against friends really pushes you to a higher level of fitness - that was absolutely true today for me at the finish.) The final hill to the finish and my last burst of speed at the end left me exhausted and at a sub-barf level (whee), but I recovered quicker than I would have expected after the race, and I'm not as sore (yet?) as I sometimes am. I'm left wondering if I could have pushed the pace a bit more in the back half; it's really hard to know on such a hilly course if a faster pace would have been maintainable, or if it would have merely caused a serious slowdown on the final hills.
Next up is training for a 20-miler. Not that there's actually an official 20 mile race in the area, but I want to have endurance built up for 20 miles by the time my favorite puzzle event, Puzzle Safari, so I don't bonk at mile 9 and 14 again.
- Mood: accomplished
Anyhow, I finished my second piece using a hybrid of the two tools and am pretty happy with it. Naturally, I gravitated towards something steampunky. (I'm also happy with my first graphic, a running card that will be the logo for our Puzzle Safari team, Seven of Diamonds. But that one was much easier from the tools perspective. I'll post it later, if I remember.) This graphic uses a cute and free train vector from KeepDesigning.com (getting an EPS file into SVG format was an adventure all to itself, taking one and a half evenings of fiddling). The part I actually created from scratch was the old paper underneath, using the Rusted Paper Tutorial from the Gimp forums. The train is mostly there to showcase what one does with old paper.
Behold! I have bent graphics programs to my will:
- Mood: accomplished
( Read more... )
agh ) and I went to a small, but extremely high-quality bluegrass festival called Wintergrass. Fortunately, I was slow enough to write it up that Drew beat me to it and said pretty much everything I would have wanted to say. Thanks, Drew!
- Mood: cheerful
And then, recently, I stumbled across the book Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners, a book that is so adorable in its embroidery that I immediately made the luggage tag in the book and found myself hooked. (See the Flickr pool for the book, here.) I felt goofy for having thrown everything out, though embroidery is an inexpensive hobby, and everything was replaced for around $25. Still, wasteful.
To practice, I decided to do some doodles on the cloth napkins we regularly use. I'm pretty happy with the result, especially this cute little bird I sketched up (based on a design in the book):
( Pictures follow... )
- Mood: accomplished
I may tag a few people over in Facebook, though I think I'm the last of my friends to hop on this meme. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. If you're on LJ and enjoyed reading this, consider yourself tagged.
( Facebook rules )
- A few years ago, I made a conscious effort to become funnier. (I'm still working on it.)
- I still sometimes ask Jeff to write jokes for me when I'm doing a speech. I envy his ability to make others laugh.
- I often narrate my life in my head in the style of Facebook status or Livejournal entries.
- Despite always swearing I wouldn’t dye my hair when I got older, I was so annoyed by gray hairs in my 30s that I started hennaing.
- I'm always surprised when I realize I'm smarter than someone. When I was quite young, I was often one of the smartest people in the class. Honors classes in college and graduate school quickly cured me of this conceit, though, and I got used to being of average intelligence, at best. It took me a while to realize that graduate school is different than the rest of the world in this regard.
- The first serious project I managed was when I was on the Renaissance Fair committee (I think I owned merchants or performers, can’t remember now) at Ohio State. I often think that experience taught me more skills that I currently use than pretty much any college course.
- I have always loved cats and can generally mimic their sounds well enough to elicit responses.
- I used to be embarrassed that I liked to craft and listen to country music, as neither of those fit my image of what a young, sophisticated, intelligent woman did. Crafting used to seem less hip than it is now. Country music hasn't gotten any more hip, but I've gotten more mellow.
- I sometimes wish I could be less image-conscious. I've always thought it would be great to have dread falls and gothic or Victorian clothing, but fear that would brand me as "that goth girl" and people would see only the stereotype. That, and I've never wanted a bunch of clothes I can only wear outside of work.
- At one point in school, I was taking weekly lessons in flute, voice, piano, tap, ballet, and gymnastics. I remember being angry that my parents wouldn't let me add track that year unless I dropped something else. The fewest lessons I ever took at one time was piano and tap.
- I identified as a Pagan for about two years of my life before I realized that although I was in love with the idea of gods, and really found ritual powerful, I was just playing an elaborate game of “let’s pretend” with myself.
- I love to dance. In college, I took belly dance lessons, ballroom dance classes, tap dance classes and learned Renaissance dances in the SCA. Thinking myself an excellent dancer, I took a two hour masters Baroque workshop and found myself completely out of my depth.
- In high school, I was quite active in science fairs and was proud to place third in the International Science and Engineering Fair. As part of that, I won a trip to Spain to the EU science fair, and that was the first time I went overseas.
- The first time I got tipsy was when I was served sangria in Spain (see #13). It was complete culture shock that alcohol would be served at a high school event, and I didn't realize it was alcoholic until I'd already drank several glasses. I also developed an extreme distaste for being around drunken people there, as drunken high school kids don’t behave particularly well.
- I find it nearly impossible to not write in complete, fully-punctuated and capitalized sentences, even when text messaging or IM'ing people. I suspect this somewhat has the effect of making me sound stilted or formal.
- For a while when I was dissatisfied with technical writing, I investigated becoming a UU minister. I looked at divinity programs, preached a sermon at my church in Austin and did several mini-sermons. Doing these made me realize that coming up with something inspirational to say week after week wasn't something I thought I could do.
- I've always thought it would be fun to start a small business of my own, but have never found an idea that I'm passionate enough about to pour my life into.
- I love personality tests. I usually test as an INFP on Meyers-Briggs, though I am gradually becoming more extroverted as I get older.
- I caught a bad case of pessimism in college and later realized that it was making me unhappy. Ditching that attitude was one of the best things I've ever done.
- I asked Jeff for something to add to this list. He suggests noting that I’m the only little girl he ever heard of who asked for a pony and got one. (Technically, I had an Appaloosa horse, not a pony.)
- Jeff and I were engaged before we’d ever permanently lived in the same city. We had been at two summer internships together.
- The dance that Jeff and I did as our wedding dance was an Italian Renaissance dance (Amoroso) instead of a ballroom dance.
- I did not attempt or complete a crossword until I was in college.
- Even though I sang in choir for several years and took two years of voice lessons, I don’t like singing for others now; I notice too many imperfections in my voice.
- I started running seriously because the Austin Distance Challenge sounded like one heck of a challenge. When I started it, I had only done a couple of 5K races. When I completed, I’d run over 100 miles in races and finished my first marathon.
- Mood: tired
