Studying is boring

I’m studying for my first test since December or November, which means I am writing a blog post instead of studying or working… Today the weather is lovely (which doesn’t augment my will to study) and I’m planning on running with my friend after work. She runs faster than me when I work out every day and she isn’t in shape and now she’s in better shape than me. Also, I went out on a mountain biking adventure through the mud around the lake about a mile from my house last night and my legs are sore. I am prepared to be destroyed.

Anyway, the improving weather (if you forget last Thursday’s blizzard) makes me think about triathlons. This year I’m REALLY going to do an Olympic/International distance. I’m not going to be stupid and get injured the week before the race after training for months. As of tonight, I will have ridden 143.5 miles, run 19.3, done 10 strength training sessions, and walked 27 miles this month. Last year in March, as far as I can tell without having my old planner in front of me, I rode around 100 miles, ran 25, and swam 4000 yds. So, I’m not too far behind from where I was last year if you ignore the fact that I have done no swimming since probably October. This year I’m also not taking a three week hiatus from working out during the critical month of May. I will have about a week off in June to go homeward for graduations and weddings and things, but theoretically I can run in Washington…

My official 16 week training plan starts the third week of April. Should I stick to my scheduled workouts all month, I will ride 249 miles, run 33 miles, and swim 5500 yds, and do 14 strength training sessions. I feel like this training program may be WAY heavy on the biking, or maybe I just need to factor my daily 4 mile commute into the biking so I don’t spend my whole life in the saddle. We shall see. It’s also funny that two weeks worth of swim workouts is only 5500 yds. I think most of my high school workouts were nearly in the 4000-5000 range. Each day. No wonder I’m a slow swimmer these days.

Guess I should probably go back to studying viscosity. For any of you engineer types out there (Hi, Dad!) the way that that rheologists use stress and strain differ slightly from the way us mechanics types tend to. It makes it sorta mind bending.

Color me amused

Quotes from a P.G. Wodehouse novel:

“‘I’ve known you since you were so high.’
‘I suppose you dandled me on the knee when I was a baby?’
‘I wouldn’t have done it on a bet! You were a revolting baby, more like a poached egg than anything.'”

About a painting of a nude lying on a mossy bank:
“While Emsworth insists that she has a distinct look of that pig of his… Something about the expression in her eyes. They way she’s lying. She said he had seen his pig lying like that a hundred times. It does it after every meal. But oddly enough, I noticed quite a resemblance to our Vicar’s wife down in Wilkshire. Only the face of course, because I never saw her lying in the nude on a mossy bank. I doubt if the Vicar would let her.”

New Kona

I get huge satisfaction out of completing projects. This is why people like my sister Lauren used to be (I have no idea if she still has a billion unfinished craft projects) and Ken (who has seven billion unfinished projects including two whole cars, a rifle, a carbon fiber bike, and two leather-working projects to name a few) are so unfathomable to me. How can you start on anything else if your initial project isn’t complete? It would drive me nuts!

About a month ago I finally finished my “new” bike. It came, and I was highly excited. It’s a Kona Cinder Cone.

But when I unpacked it, it was worse than the Ebay description had made it seem. The seat post was stuck tight. (We actually ended up MELTING it out. The bike is steel the seat post was aluminum.) The chain was less of a chain and more of a bunch of rust. The shifters were busted. But most importantly, there was a giant dent in the top tube.

The frame was probably safe to ride, but I’d rather not have it break on me and since the idea is to use this bike as both a commuter and a hardtail mountain bike if I want one or if I have a visitor, it had to be fixed.

Welding in the new top tube after stripping off all the paint. That is not me welding. I am not a good welder.

Isn’t that a gorgeous weld? It is. Trust me.

Brazing on a disc brake mount for if I get discs. Again, not me brazing.

This is me. I made the slits in the cable-guides. Big contribution…

Then I painted it purple and it was a nightmare to get painted properly because of bubbles and non-hardening epoxy. However. I persevered, probably giving cancer to most of the Case Formula Hybrid team who happened to be upstairs having a meeting while I was in the basement spray painting as the furnace pumped the basement air into the living room. At least the air I was breathing was fresh… Then I put all the components back on – and yes, I did at least do that myself – and proceeded to get a flat the first day I rode it. I then installed my mountain bike wheel, forcing it past the brakes and putting a big cut in the tire so I had to order new tires for BOTH bikes. However, I now have a ridiculously light, fully functional, purple commuter. And it was cheap! Please don’t allow me to think about the countless hours we spent on it.

Purple

I may be unconsciously obsessed with the color purple.

Blue is my favorite color. Always has been. Blue, blue, blue.

But yesterday during class I noticed I was wearing a purple shirt (one of two I wear often) and a purple watch, had worn a purple jacket when I ran to school, and was taking notes in a purple binder.

It gets worse! If I hadn’t run to school, I would have been riding a purple bicycle – that I painted myself. The curtains in my bedroom are purple. The background color I use for all my technical power point presentations at conferences is purple. My shins are often purple. I use purple post-it notes at work, or did until I ran out and had to go back to the ugly yellow ones. March is purple in my planner.

Yesterday my sister wrote a journal entry that details what each color makes her think of. “Lisa” is the first thing under the color purple and one of only two people in the list.

Blue is still my favorite color.

And now my mom shames me into blogging

You know it’s been too long since you’ve posted when your mother calls you up (On the phone, of all the antiquated contraptions!) to find out if you’re still alive.

Ahem.

Life has just gotten busy what with class, research, working out, going to Washington DC, reading books, working on VBS, experimenting with my new breadmaker, flexing my biceps to see if they’ve done any growing yet, scooping cat poop, and remaining trapped in the cycle of finally putting away all my clean laundry off of my floor only to replace it with more laundry. It’s a disease.

But I’m back now! So watch this space. I expect I’ll probably be posting in another 19 days…

I am a terrible daughter and probably in the doghouse

This is my mom. Isn’t she good looking? Oh, you can’t see? This is the only picture I have of her face from Seattle. Clearly I am destined to be a world-famous photographer.

This better?

Yesterday was her birthday.

I wrote it on my planner – both the month AND the day pages.

I thought about calling her when I got out of bed and thought she probably didn’t want to be awoken at 4:00 AM.

I thought about calling her at work when I had some down time, but decided she might be out transporting my sister from school or running errands.

At lunch I requested that Ken remind me to call her before I went to bed.

I thought about calling her when I got home from work, but decided I would wait to call until my Dad might be home too.

The next time I thought about calling her when I was at that point in falling asleep where there is no way that you can wake back up and hold a coherent conversation to wish somebody a happy birthday. My parents don’t have caller ID, so they would probably think it was a monster calling growl at them.

So here I sit before I go to work, typing this post and hoping that I haven’t been disowned. I blame the time difference, by time it’s late enough for me to call home it’s also late enough that my brain functions poorly.

Mom:
Happy Birthday yesterday!
I DIDN’T really forget!
I DO love you!
And I WILL call you sometime this weekend (Although probably not tonight because you guys are always off gallivanting about on Friday nights because you’re way cooler than me.)

A long post about very little

Lots of snow

The past couple of weeks in bullet form:

• It snowed a lot last weekend and it was highly cool.
• I made the best granola I’ve ever made. The secret is to include the magical ingredients: A handful of walnuts, a cup of whole wheat flour, and molasses.
• I have faithfully been keeping up with my strength workouts and am enjoying actually being able to increase the number of fake push ups I do and the amount of time I can hold a plank.
• I made homemade yogurt, which sounds really weird and in fact Ken refuses to try it, but is actually amazing. It is A Very Good Thing that Ken won’t try it because then he’d like it and devour my hard work in a matter of days. Or hours. It’s a little thinner than store-bought US yogurt, but it reminds me almost exactly of the stuff we put on our cereal in Denmark. Mmmm. And it’s about six times cheaper too!
• I may be little overly excited about the yogurt.
• I got very angry with NBC for their stupid online Olympics policy. They would only let you watch the current streaming content if you have cable TV. If you have cable TV, why would you need to watch the Olympics online? The only people who really need to watch the Olympics online are people like me, who don’t even have a freaking digital television receiver! Of COURSE I don’t have cable! Ridiculous.
• I decided my tendon issues in my foot are all better and started running again. Would you believe I only ran 2 miles in February? Shameful!
• It seems like research is proceeding at a ridiculous snail’s pace. I just reviewed all the things I need to accomplish before I start writing more papers and a dissertation (Not that I’m looking forward with great excitement to writing for months again, but it is sorta necessary for the whole graduation thing.) and it seems overwhelming. My goal is to start writing at least one paper in September, and have my dissertation well started by December. Yikes!
• I’m considering volunteering to teach Sunday school. I have suggested that we do family Sunday school and nobody else who might be involved in the Sunday school program has any idea how you could possibly teach more than one age child at a time, while to me it seems perfectly natural. I wouldn’t mind teaching, except that I tend to be off trying to wring all the possible enjoyment out of the limited Ohio wilderness about every other week in the summer (when I’m not playing piano…) and we haven’t traditionally taken a Sunday School break in the summer. Perhaps things need to change.
• I am picking up a breadmaker tonight for $6. I love Craigslist.
• I spent $93 at Target last night. This is highly irritating because it’s not like I bought anything fun or exciting. Actually, I am excited about the cloth shower curtain I bought. It’s going to become curtains for the windows in the dining room so that we can actually have some light in there during the day instead of just leaving the blinds closed all the time.
• I finally went ahead and ordered a better tire for the snow for my Kona, which pretty much means that it’s not going to snow again this winter. I’ve been riding with a nearly smooth rear tire, which really is suboptimal when there is limited traction.
• Today it was sunny and it occurred to me on my ride to work that I couldn’t remember the last time it was sunny while I rode to work.