omg. In my meeting with my advisor this morning, he said he thinks I have a bright future career ahead of me.

O_O

coulda bowled me over with a feather. wow.

he was asking whether I thought he should try to persuade one of his master's students to go for a PhD. I let slip that I still am not sure whether it was a good thing that I got talked into pursuing a PhD, and he got this great shocked expression on his face and said "are you kidding me? I think you've got a bright future ahead of you." (To which I replied, "yes, if I survive the next year," and he agreed that the last few months are always a hard push.)

okay, I just wanted to record that for posterity. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

there's something about my school office that makes me sleepy. I get here, feeling fine, then suddenly my eyelids start weighing about 50 tons. For a while I thought it was the music, so I switched from my piano station to techno, but I'm still sleepy. I swear I'm never this tired when I work at home. Also I've been sleeping a ridiculous amount lately, I honestly shouldn't be tired. At this point I'm consuming copious amounts of caffeine, though it seems to no longer have much of an effect. I'm about to give in to the call of the NoDoz instead of just the caffeinated mints... Someone stop me.

one of the interesting side-effects of being on Prozac has been a reduction in the intensity with which I obsess over things. I like to say that I have a bit of an addictive personality (though it always feels like a cop-out when I say it), which I blame for my sugar addiction, my trichs, etc. The sugar addiction is as bad as ever, though the sugar high & crash are super intense now, to the point of being almost unbearable (aka bad enough to get me to stop eating sugar...).The trichs had mostly gone away (!) since starting the meds, but it seems to be ramping back up again. I've been really obsessive all afternoon, am not quite sure where the time went, and didn't get nearly the amount of work done as I should have. bummer.

overall the effects of Prozac have been kind of meh. As predicted, my jaw gets sore very easily, like if I'm eating carrots. My sleep patterns have been affected, which I think was the plan (I was instructed to take the pills in the morning rather than the evening, because depressed-me dreaded getting up in the mornings but never had trouble falling asleep at night), though I don't really like the realization of that plan -- mostly it means I can't stay up all night anymore like I used to for deadlines. I definitely feel less stressed-out, which is lovely. I also have no motivation, which is the opposite of the intended effect. Hrrm. And of course the obsession-reduction has been nice, though very unexpected. I'm not tempted to ask my dr if I can get off of Prozac, but I am kind of wishing for something...better? different, for sure. Meh.

and sometimes that's even a good thing.

Happy Easter everyone! I went to a lovely Easter service today at First Presbyterian. They have some great traditions there, including having the children all crack an egg on their heads during the time-with-the-children, and bringing the choir to the front of the congregation and inviting anyone in the congregation to join them in singing the Hallelujah Chorus. God, it's amazing. I was grinning like a fool the whole time.

Also, last night Tristan left an Easter basket on my porch, full of my favorite candies. Aww.

I'm such a sucker for tradition. :D

[Side note that at church today, I saw in the announcements that one of the Easter lilies was donated by Rosemary Cartozian in memory of Charleen Alice Hollingshead. Weird. Must look up later.]

I raced the train this morning on my bike, and totally beat it to the stop. Yeah baby. :) Endorphins > caffeine!

This morning as I was getting ready I had a couple of awesome insights about how to design the research for my dissertation. And, now at school 2 hours later, I still mostly remember those insights. That never happens! I'm soooo thrilled. Especially because last night my advisor sent me an e-mail to ask for a meeting this morning to talk about my dissertation stuff. :-/ Never a good sign & I'm quite nervous about it ... but feeling a bit better about it now. :)

I remembered to pack and bring my breakfast, espresso, snacks, & lunch to school today. Yay saving money!

Oh also? Happy Maundy Thursday! I even managed to wear purple today, yay! And one of the researchers here at school just gave me a carrot-shaped bag of candy. Aww.

Small accomplishments I guess, but still I'm proud of em. Go me!

no? yeah, me neither.

I just finished my first race ever. It was hard. Miles 1 and 3 were okay. Running up Broadway was harder than running up Barbur, which was the part I was dreading due to Geoff's description of the run from previous years. I spent the last mile or so saying that I wanted to throw up -- then I foolishly sprinted (sort of) to the finish line and suddenly I really did need to throw up. They should have garbage cans or something at the finish line for that.

I feel pretty crappy now. Hip hurts, blister is all torn up, whole body is shaking, having a hard time concentrating on the screen. But I'll be good and wait awhile before swearing off racing for forever.

I do think I ran faster than I would on my own. It was pretty fun to play the follow-that-butt game. Surprisingly I don't think it helped to run with music; it was better to hear the pounding of feet all around me. Thanks to _fool for sticking with me through the whole race. And to the cute brown tank top girl that we followed for the first mile of the race. And to the hot 15k runners that I chased as best I could the last mile of the race... Mmm cute runners...

proof that packing leads to insanity: I just 'found' the same gadget three times. and every time, I thought, "ooh, I didn't know I had another one of these! that's so great!" yeah. I just have the one. it didn't even move. I just kept unearthing it from the rest of the junk in its box. sigh.

seriously, there is nothing that makes me feel more materialistic than seeing all of my crap in the middle of my living room. seriously, moving sucks. I have been brutal in giving stuff away -- to the point that my most-minimalistic friend Taniya was actually stopping me from putting some things on the give-away pile. but I haven't actually taken the pile to Goodwill/that-other-one-on-Glisan, so it too is sitting out on my living room floor. gah, the stuff! I hates it, precious!!

also, due to the moving-insanity plus the I-think-I-have-strep of this week, I totally forgot my dad's birthday today. I hate being a bad daughter. :( and I'm barely keeping my head above water at school. I also hate being a bad grad student. sigh. all I have to do is make it through this weekend, and it'll all be worth it ... right???

I'm moving this weekend. Moving sucks. Always has, always will. Even when you're moving out of a less-than-awesome place and going 7 blocks to the most-awesome-place-known-to-man. Even when you're leaving a so-so roommate and getting the awesome _fool for a roommate instead. Even when all of your awesome friends are helping you move, and are bringing their awesome husbands, boyfriends, & guy-she's-dating to help out too. ;) Moving just sucks.

so I'm going through all the boxes in my storage space, and have discovered that while I sadly did not save all of the boxes I used for my previous-previous move (the previous move was only a block-and-a-half, so much of the move was conducted in paper bags and the same 4 boxes, fill-empty-repeat), I have for some reason saved all of the shoe boxes that have come into my possession over the past 4 years. Um. ??? Yeah, I really don't know why. Maybe I thought I was going to ship stuff to my family. Anyway, the shoe boxes are all too small to be of use in the move, so I'm collapsing them for recycling. And I've decided that I love shoe companies that, rather than gluing the sides & corners into place, instead just fold their boxes into being, with tricky little flaps and slits. Like Nike. Yeah. Nike-love. Who'd've thunk it!

sigh. I hate being scolded. Even when I deserve it. Even when the scolding is gentle.

boo.

oh my God it is freaking beautiful out there today. So beautiful that I decided I could brave the cold frosty weather and bike in from Sunset. It was soooo sunny the whole ride! I was grinning like an idiot until my teeth felt frozen. :D And the Walkie Man was with me today, so I barely waited at any lights for the entire first half of the trip ... which caused some consternation as I tried to pull out my sunglasses from my messenger bag while riding ... but who cares, I was wearing sunglasses! In the middle of Feburary, in Portland!!! And I got to unzip the pit-zips in my jacket for the first time ever! And I only had one near-mishap the entire ride! (which involved a super quiet car sneaking up close behind me and startling me into nearly riding into the curb -- ma bike is a monster-girl and can take on any curb, but only head-on -- fortunately I swerved back and got away with just scraping the bottom of my sneaker on the sidewalk.) And no one ran me over on Bethany which is sadly shoulder-less. And I only coughed up one lung because I'm still recovering from that stupid flu. And I made it up the big stupid hill -- with a stop sign at the bottom of it! -- that I had no idea was coming up at the end of Bethany. And I started to teach myself to ride standing up! Yeah baby!!!

anyway. It's gorgeous out. If you get the chance, go outside & play. :)

My kitty is getting old. Her kidneys are failing, and she's lost more than half of her body weight such that where once even strangers teased her for being fat (she's big-boned!!), now she's mostly a pile of bones. It's ... sad, of course. My thoughts and actions focus on her with much greater frequency. Last night, she deigned to curl up next to me under my new blanket, and so I just laid there with her for 2 hours instead of getting up to do chores. Totally worth it.

She goes through ups and downs, which is hard. Recently, she went about 5 days without eating, but before that she had a period of almost-normal eating, dry food too! Today I thrilled to see that she'd eaten 2 forkfuls of the liver paté wet food.

I love my kitty, I wish she could tell me how she's feeling and how I can make her feel better. Why is love so hard sometimes?

when I'm drifting off to sleep, I almost always conjure up a little daydream to send me towards dreamland. It almost never turns into a full-blown dream, but sometimes it works out that way. Usually I'm dreaming of a 'more' version of me -- where I'm more popular, more famous, more successful. Lately I've just been (day)dreaming about trail running. Not the most relaxing of subjects, and not the best way to send myself down the rabbithole ... but mostly, I just wonder what happened to my usual range of daydream fodder. Could it actually be that I'm content with where I am for now?

so I was going to get on here and whine about how sick I've been, cuz dang I hate having the fever and it hates me right back, but then I had this deep thought two nights ago and felt so very Zen the whole next day that I think maybe I'll try to write about that instead.

[unfortunately the Zen has faded a little, and I'm not sure I'll be able to capture in words what was suddenly so clear for me then. And this is about the first time since I got sick that I've felt able to coherently express myself in writing. Also, I suspect this is going to come across as whiny but I swear it's intended to be joyous and peaceful, as that's how I felt in the moment.]

I had the thought that it's going to be difficult to find someone -- a mate, a match, a partner -- who fits me really well. Because I'm this really odd-shaped puzzle piece, with so many different ins and outs that it's like I've pieced myself together from several different puzzles ... so I'm never going to fit into a single puzzle. And it seems like that was almost a conscious choice, to find and immerse myself in sets of hobbies & activities that don't normally go together. Creative writer, mathematician & logician. Shy schoolgirl, performer & dancer. Christian, computer scientist. Girly girl, weight lifter. Curled up on the couch with a book & a movie, out running the trails or skiing the bumps.

anyway. Obviously they're not polar opposites ... but they are somewhat odd combinations, yet many are activities that I'd like to share with my significant other. I'd love to have a computer geek who occasionally buried his nose in a book but also took me out swing dancing and helped me instruct a Guard. And the thing is, I think I've pretty well set myself up so that such a person just doesn't exist. (Hell, most people in the world don't even know what Guard is, and 90% of the males who do, are gay.) But acknowledging that I want the impossible didn't make me want to lower my standards ... it just made me okay with the possibility of not finding that guy. This is so weird! I've never been okay with that thought! It's crazily freeing, and left me feeling very Zen-like. Seriously, I think I decided that it's all going to be okay.

on top of that little thought, there has been overwhelming evidence of late that I have friends. Good friends, friends who do a really excellent job of taking care of me!! (Which sounds weird probably and makes me sound a bit dependent but oh well. That's totally how it is.) Friends whom I love, who go on the prowl with me, who make sure I get the good deals in cell phone service, who help me move from this home to the next, who bring me the perfect foods when I'm sick, who go out with me or stay in, who tell me I'm pretty & funny & smart, who push my boundaries and make me grow every day in so many ways. I'm so in love with my friends!!

love joy & peace. What could be more Zen?

the random wonderings of my poor sleep-deprived brain. brought to you by: the number 30, the month of February, and all my friends who are too busy sleeping/living their own lives to entertain me through the wee hours of the night. ;)

why do they put sharp more-paper-than-cloth tags on shirts that are obviously meant to be cozy & cuddly?

one-derful. three-ky. four-tunate. six-y. seven-ly.

I should go running with my advisor sometime. his idea of a sprint is very different from mine. he seems to think it's possible to sprint a marathon. *rolls eyes* (we're talking metaphorically here. I don't think that guy ever runs. or sprints. even metaphorically. the man is a freaking machine.)

my ankles are disgustingly swollen right now, from me sitting at my desk for 18+ hours/day for the last 5 days. ick. and ow. I propped my feet up on the windowsill for a little while earlier, which was nice but unsustainable. sigh. actually I'm pretty impressed at how well my body has held up this week! I haven't gotten sick (yet *knocks on wood*), I've managed to avoid unintentionally passing out on my deskcouchbed, and I didn't even feel tired for most of today. crazy.

does anyone like to ski by themselves? I mean, clearly people do, else they wouldn't have the singles lift lines. but I just don't see the point in it. it's such a social activity for me.

what is cost? what is worth? my advisor says this bakeoff isn't worth pulling an all-nighter. but the cost of an all-nighter seems really neglibile to me. so not only is this bakeoff worth it, to me, but something less lofty would also be worth pulling an all-nighter. hell, any excuse to stay up late for this night owl...

am I really that predictable? I listen to pandora.com at school, and have some 20-odd stations that I've seeded with (what I think are) very varied songs. but lately I've started noticing a lot of crossover -- songs that I heard on one station are also being played on another. wtf? is it really true that, at the heart of it, I only like one type of music? or has music become so vanilla lately that everything sounds like everything else?

omg is no one awake??? even CL's missed connections doesn't get updated very frequently this time of the night. sucky.

yeah that's all I got for now. I think I'll come back & edit as the night goes on. say hi if you stop by, I'm sure I'd love the distraction!!

yay I'm so proud of myself, I went running today despite circumstances being against me. tried to sleep in this morning, but apparently my body took that to mean 'get up at 6:45.' yeah. stupid body. so I puttered about the house, did a bunch of chores, did some work for next week's bakeoff. I noticed that it wasn't raining out, but was just too ridiculously early to go running. eventually the vet called, so I took Ariel in for subcu-fluidation and antibiotics. (also we got some new wet food that probably tastes like candy to her; she scarfs it up, yay.) at that point it was raining to beat the band; _fool & I decided that we weren't actually hardcore enough to run in the cold rain. so I worked away the afternoon and eventually took myself to the gym, where I learned a few things about my physical limitations.


the human body, how far we can/will/do push it, and how quickly & willingly it'll recover from such pushing, is seriously an amazing thing.

happy half-birthday to me!

I just recently realized that I'm a slow runner. :( I hadn't actually paid a lot of attn to my real-time speed, just whether or not I made it through my intervals without dying. I knew what my top interval speed on the treadmill was -- 7.5 -- but hadn't a clue how that translated to real-world speed. it's about an 8:30 mile. now I'm feeling all competitive and wanting to improve that!

I'd thought yesterday's route, that I ran with _fool, was 4 miles ... turns out to actually be 4.7 with all the zig-zagging we did. [I'd put the gmap url in here but can't figure out how to make just that part friends-only, and I figure Chris doesn't actually want me to advertise his home address to the world.] we ran it in 44:44 by my clock, which I translated yesterday (when I thought we'd run 4 mi) to an 11:11 mile. depressingly & pathetically slow. but now with the real numbers, it turns out to be a 9:31 mile. lookee me, I just took 1:40 off my mile! heehee. I'm so fast now! okay not really.

I'd be happy getting up to an 8 min mile at this point. we'll see what we can do with some real training...