What's That?

Who just got a PhD in physics?

Wait...what...me? That's right bitches.

Dr. LeahC is home free!

yay!

Thanks for all the good vibes!

In a few hours....

I'll be "done". I use quotes...and by using them I am really meaning a nice set of air quotes...because of course there is still paperwork, and I'm sure there will be a few corrections to make to the thesis. BUT the brunt of it will be done. More importantly this long presentation will be done....seriously have been worried or thinking about this day for *years*.

I actually slept a lot last night. The previous two nights I had gotten 4 hours of sleep and I was really really tired last night and so I was out at about 9:30 and slept through until my 5am wake up call.

On the drive to Bloomington yesterday morning I gave a practice talk in the car which went pretty well and then Jason quizzed me on some notes I had taken and I knew the stuff pretty well. We spent the rest of the day just hanging out in Bloomington, I got the *worst* pedicure/manicure of my life, played some pool in the union where my dad schooled Jason and I, and then last night my parents and Jason and I went to dinner at Yogi's which was our old hangout when we lived here.

Oh yeah. We parked in the union parking lot at about 10:30am and then came back around 4:30pm to get our stuff to check in. Jason gave me the....you have the keys. Knowing that I didn't have the keys I looked at him with a look of...uhoh and we both ran to the front of the car where we put our hands on the hood and realized that for the 3rd time this year (and of all time) I had left the keys in the car....and not only that...but left the car was running....for 6 hours. So. Stupid. So we got some auto service dude to come by. I went back to check in to the hotel (there is a hotel in the IU union) and it was everything the kid checking us in could do to not really laugh in my face. Sigh. Well I might be a little preoccupied.

Today and tomorrow are going to be so much better because there won't be this *thing* hanging over my head. Thanks to all the peeps out there for the shoutouts and the good lucks. I'll be talking at 10am EST :-) Too bad it's not on TV.

Alright, Mrs. LeahC out.....soon Dr. LeahC will be back.

Feeling Young Again...

But not the fun party girl young. The young sit on my ass in the corner of a library and try my best to concentrate on re-reading stuff. Not surprising I'm not the person I was at 18 1/2 and so found it tough to sit there. Of course at 18 1/2 I was taking Physics I and History of Comic Book Art (I kid you not on that one the professor looked like Clark Kent....one of the best classes I took in college) and so the studying was a bit more fun...and more varied. I have been all in the Bc meson's koolaid for the past two years and so while I know a lot of it sometimes I'm like...WAIT what is that all about.

I never ever wake up on my own early. Ever. I am so attached to my alarm clock and the snooze button that at times it becomes an annoying problem (I have to set my alarm for 45 minutes before I want to get up because I less than three the snooze button...ok but granted I like to be up early, I just wish I could do it more on my own than relying on the alarm clock...anyways). This morning however I snapped awake at 4:45 in the morning for no reason at all. But I was up so I got up and checked my e-mail hoping to have heard back from my Adviser on the draft of my talk. And I did which was exciting as there weren't too many comments on the talk itself. I had also asked if he would be interested in joining the family for dinner on Thursday night and he said he was and so that's really exciting. It's going to be a happy day.

After reading e-mailed I thought I would just fall asleep on the couch to SportsCenter...but you know how they have all the previews of what they are going to talk about and I wanted to see all of them...including Cubs highlights...ooh they are starting to smoke again! I fell asleep for another 20 minutes or so and then it was up and on it.

It's 11am here in Chicago which means it's noon in bloomington. In 48 hours I'll be done. Who's tired of me talking about my defense? Anyone? Oh right...I am!

What!!! Double Digits!?!

That’s right people. And not just for the week (which granted has been a bit of a stretch these last few weeks...and will be again this week)! Jason and I ran a solid 10 miles yesterday morning and felt great. We drove to the lakefront path at Montrose and started our run east of the golf course. When we got to the totem pole we met up with my Dad and the three of us ran together to Belmont. It was like we were our own little running group which was fun. From there we continued down stopping at the Fleet Feet aid station at North Avenue Beach which was nice. I love those aid stations as I refuse to carry water bottles in the summer but sometimes you want more than water and so it’s nice to get a cup of Gatorade before moving on. We went as far south as Navy Pier and then headed back. We ended at the totem pole where we met back up with Dad who was feeling some calf pain. We went to his apartment and had a nice big breakfast. From there we decided to go home since I am just about on the edge of explosion since my defense is this week (holy ass...this week...how is that right?!?!?!?) and I wanted to go home and just try and study a little. We had a great rest of our Sunday napping, watching the Cubs come back to life, making a quick dinner and finishing up with a walk to Piccolo for some ice cream and a walk around our neighborhood.

The weekly review in running is shown below. As you can see we are finally in the positive for our planned versus actual, and I had a nice week of running consistently getting in 5 days worth.


The rest of the weekend was just as good as our Sunday. On Friday we had Psych night (cause the new season is on and Jason and I are loving it more than ever) and had my dad and Sue over for some bbq, some Psych and of course some Pineapple for dessert. The episode was as quick as ever with LOTS of references to movies from the 80s: The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day off. After they left we discovered that we had recorded Pretty in Pink at some point on our DVR and so we watched that and caught some of the references from the show. On Sunday morning The Breakfast Club was on and we had our fill of 80s hair and Molly Ringwald.

Saturday we went to The Taste of Lincoln with my Dad. I found a super cool new necklace which was exciting, we listened to some good music, had some good bad food...corndog yum! From there Jason and I went home and I was exhausted and so I took a nap, and from there we headed to St. Charles where we met Jason’s dad for dinner. His dad was at a golf camp in the area and so we went to meet him. It was a really good time and we went to this really good Mexican place. For those of you in St. Charles, I think it was called El Puente and it’s right downtown. Really good stuff.

Thus we come back to Monday. I am going to the library today and locking myself in there to study. I know I know stuff, but I am so worried they are going to ask me stuff I don’t know, and they probably will and that’s probably ok, I’m just really nervous. I know I should treat it like, I GET to give this amazing talk and show off what I did for the past two years because my analysis is really complicated and I am really proud of it. But who the hell does that really? I mean who is ever that comfortable standing in front of people? In fact I was talking to my adviser the other day and he was going to California to give a talk at SLAC and he said, “I’m really kind of nervous because there will be a lot of big wigs there.” I laughed (to myself of course) as I think of him as one of the big wigs and I don’t know how he could be nervous as he is so freakin’ brilliant and gives really good talks...but I guess that never goes away.

This week will be lacking in running because we are taking today off and then tomorrow we’ll get something in, Wednesday we leave early in the morning for Bloomington and no running that day, Thursday is my actual defense and I am planning on running around the campus for a few miles in the morning, then Friday Jason and I are going to just enjoy Bloomington as we have spent 10 years of our life associated with IU and we heart Bloomington (especially in small doses). Then this weekend is my cousin’s wedding which should be a crazy good time. They are having their wedding reception where Jason and I had our wedding and reception, and then on Sunday they have a pack of Cubs tickets for everyone and we have that going on. In short. This week = awesome (should anyways).

Alright...well in less than 72 hours I’ll be giving my talk. That’s right, I have a countdown going in my head of the hours left. This chica cannot WAIT for that to be done!

Feeling Good for 5, Getting Excited and Why So Sleepy?

I have decided that I could just really put the subject of each topic in my posts in the subject line and then you don't even need to read this like today.....

Well nevermind, I'll just give the details.

Yesterday I took the train back downtown. There is something about those freakin' Metra trains that make my eyelids close on me. I'm all ready to get a lot of reading done and then my head is leaning on the window and the eyes are droopy. Anyways, went downtown and met up with Jason. We Bluelined it to Milwaukee and then walked home from there (I hate being on crowded buses and we are only about 2 miles from the stop so a walk it was. After we got home I tried giving the theory part of my talk to Jason. I was all excited about it, but as that was the first time I had run through it, it was pretty rough. But that's how it used to be when I have the analysis part of it which at this point I have down so I don't really even need to run through it (although of course I will).

After that and cooling down a bit we went out for a 5 mile run. Again, just trying to get the mojo back and so we started off really slow. We went for our usual 5 miler around the neighborhood and felt really good. No pain and the breathing was ok (my achilles has been feeling really good...most of the time. I am experimenting with lacing my shoes differently and it seems to be making a world of difference) and it wasn't as hot out as we thought it was going to be.

Ok...what's the next subject up there in the subject line. Right. Getting Excited. About what? Well everything but specifically these days, giving my talk next week. Jason took of Wednesday-Friday and so we will leave for Bloomington very early on Wednesday morning. While I am nervous for my talk, I also realized that I am going to get 3 great days in Bloomington and the defense part of it is only about 2 hours of it. That's right 6 years of work all wrapped up in a nice 1 hour talk with questions. I think my talk looks good and I have added in some slides from the last time I gave this talk. I will send my adviser a copy of the talk on Sunday and hopefully he'll get back with comments soonish. I am also supposed to expand on my conclusions section of my these as was requested by one of my committee members and I haven't done that yet.

This morning I took the Metra train back to the lab (probably the last time!) and I was again all set to read a bunch of my book (I'm reading Atlas Shrugged) and I sat down and I mean instantly I was shutting my eyes. What the ass? Is there some kind of something in the air on those trains that I am allergic to or something. Sheesh.

Today I am just at the lab and working on my talk and trying to "get my words down" as Jason says and then around lunch time (in about an hour) I am going to walk around the ring, stopping at the main building for lunch. It's about 4 miles around. The whole "leaving Fermilab and academia" is a post in and of itself and I don't want to really think about it just yet because while I know it's time to move on...it's still sad as parts of working here were really cool.

Alright, well that's all from these parts. Happy Friday all!

Spirit of Racine Photos

I took 250 pictures at the Spirit of Racine Triathlon on Sunday. That's right...250. Most of them are linked below.

Here's just one, showing the crazy that was the fog on that morning. Click on it for the full gallery on my smugmug account (I took a lot of random pictures and so there might be one of you ...you being a random person I don't know but might be reading this...of you in there). Enjoy!

Why So Serious?

oh yes. Go. See. Batman. Right now if you have to!

One of the best movies I have *ever* seen. It's 2 hour and 32 minutes long and it so doesn't feel that long. Totally action packed, great scenes of Chicago and I'll probably have nightmares of the Joker in the future.

Yesterday at the lab I got the tests done that I needed to get done and things worked out perfectly (hot damn is it nice when physics works...it's like I don't know real I guess ;-) ). I decided to come into the lab today and tomorrow for some time so that I can review my thesis (you know that 200 page document I have to defend in a weeks time...shit, in a week's time the talk will be done (I'll be giving it at 9am Chicago time) and I'll be trying to answer questions about it...to my thesis committee who don't read this...be nice ;-) ) and make any last minute changes to my talk that I think are necessary before I send it off to my adviser. Poor Jason is going to have to listen to practice talks starting tonight.

But after that. Wow. I'm going to be one happy LeahC....hopefully anyways.

Tonight Jason and I are going to run probably about 5 miles around the neighborhood. In 38 days we'll be able to do that run on the lakefront path as we'll hopefully be in our new digs at that point.

So that's it. Time to review!

WALL-E & Fermilab & New Running Plan

Two of the above make me want to cheer and the other makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little.

Yesterday theDad, Jason and I headed downtown to see Batman. We planned on going to the 7:30 show but when we got there all the tickets for all the shows were sold out! We decided to get tickets for tonight's 7:30 show instead. Dad left but Jason and I hung around to see WALL-E which was *fantastic*. There is so little dialog in that movie and they totally got away with it.

Right now I am at Fermilab. It seems like physics analyses are like Velcro, you can't easy pull away from them. I am here working on some tests of the analysis. Never. Ending. I am hoping *hoping* that I can get what needs to be done by next week so that I can have responses back to the reviewers and then defend my thesis and then really really be done. Oh yeah. A week from tomorrow at 10am, I'll be all, "blah blah blahing" my defense away. I'm really really nervous for that, and I'm just hoping I calm down in the next week before I give it. I'll run through some practice talks with Jason as that really helped last time I had to give a big talk.

As far as running goes... I ran 3 miles yesterday and I'm taking today off. But what about the future of the running plans around here? It seems that Jason and I really need to be signed up for a race to stay in that training mind set. We are not exactly out of shape, but not exactly in the place we were last year or the summer before that. This summer reminds me of the summer before our wedding, it just seems that as soon as we get into a little training grove something comes up that screws up the plans. Things like interviews, and getting new jobs, and new apartments and celebrating those things. SO I think we are going to do the Miami Marathon on January 25th. As our bodies won't be acclimated to the heat and we'll have to do some training in cooler months in Chicago this probably won't be a PR race, but it will be nice to get out of Chicago in January. I think we are going to follow a beginner program (Hal Higdon Novice 2 plan) just to get back into a rhythm. With me starting a new job we are going to have to figure out how to run around a 9-5 schedule and so I think an easier plan would be good for that. It's just 4 days a week and that will start towards the end of September.

Alright. Well I AM at the lab so I better get working on what I came here to do.

Hot & Humid

Yesterday after the JMan got home we went out for a neighborhood run with the intention of ending at the gym and doing some weight lifting. We did the running part going about 3.4 miles. The lifting heavy things part...hmm not so much. We started on the assisted dip/pullup machine and I got *really* lightheaded. The gym we belong to doesn't have the greatest cooling system ever as it was just as hot in there as it was outside. I hadn't eaten much during the day either which I'm sure didn't help. I grabbed a Gatorade but that didn't do the trick and so we headed back home.

I'm currently in my apartment. It's muggy in here and we already started to pack up our shit and so it's not the nicest environment to work in but physics must be done and so work it is :-). Yes that's right we aren't moving for another 5.5ish weeks, but a) I'm very excited to move and b) my Dad and Stepmom are around and offered to help with our basement storage area (read : area where we have a lot of shit which we haven't looked at in probably 6 years and I'm terrified of looking at) and so we started the process. Sue moved all the storage area crap out of cardboard boxes and into nice big plastic tupperware tubs that are now all categorized, which is exciting. I hope this move is better than the last few. It's so easy to go..."Oh it's not that bad to move, just put stuff in boxes" then you start and all of a sudden it's 3am and you are rifling through pages of papers going ... yeah...WHAT IS ALL THIS SHIT? So we are starting early to hopefully lighten our load a bit this time around.

I'm going to try and get a run in this afternoon/late morning and then tonight I think the plan is to go see Batman tonight. Yay!

Spoiled Beach Plans and a Weekend of Fun

On Friday, just as I sat down at the beach I had a call from my adviser. The reviews of my paper that had been submitted came back and to answer one of the questions there is quite a bit of work that needs to be done. My God this process is annoying. Now I am not being paid by my university and as my health insurance expired the second they stopped paying me I had to go out and find bridge insurance to get me from that point to when my new insurance will take over. I know it's not all about the money, but rather the pursuit of science...but it's always a little bit about the money. Had I chosen to stay in the field this wouldn't be a big deal, it would just be another little thing that had to be done. I will still do it, it's just that right now I have to prepare for my defense talk which is now in a week and three days, I have a new and super exciting new job starting in three weeks and so now this looks like it will have to be done in the evenings and on the weekends. I'm frustrated because of course I want all the work to end up in a publication, and it has to, I just wish that this kind of question had come up in the already long and involved review process so that I could get away from it. Anyways. frustrating to say the least. So I left the beach to start looking at that. I thought that the last month or so would be a relaxing break but it's been nothing of the kind. From job interviews, interview tests, studying for interviews (even though I know that's impossible), last Friday was the first "day off" that I thought I could have. Oh well.

Jason and I spent the rest of the weekend a) talking about our new apartment and b) spectating a half ironman competition in Racine, WI. This girl did the race and holy shit man, she's amazing. In fact everyone that day was awesome. Jason and I stood at the finish line watching people finish, and there were a lot of faces filled with determination, tears and laughter. Jason and I are more and more intersted in doing triathlons as they just look really really fun. After we got home I found out that my new boss's wife did the race that day too, which is quite the small world.

We drove Barb up there on Saturday to check in and to drop her bike off and then Jason and I had a barbeque and then tickets to the White Sox (I know I know...still an evening of baseball is fun) game. We had to leave the game early due to an early wake up call on Sunday. Jason and I got up at 2:30 in the morning and left at about 3:15 so that we could stop at the starbucks that is open 24 hours on North Ave. It's awesome when you are freshly awake and there are people that had yet to go to bed. Awesome. We picked up Barb right on time and headed north so she could get setup and marked up and all that good stuff.

The race started about an hour late due to fog. We walked with Barb to the start of the swim and stood among the masses of wetsuit clad folks. The water was a brisk 55 degrees yesterday! Just about when the swim started we headed back towards where the transition was so we could catch Barb between the swim and the bike and then her starting out on the Bike. She was a lot faster than we though she was going to be and spanked her goal out of the park. She transitioned fast and was on the bike.

While she was biking Jason and I walked around downtown Racine which was deader than a doornail. It was such a cute downtown and we thought that there would be a cafe or something and there was *nothing*. We headed back to just about the start of the bike where we had seen a restaurant. We had a great breakfast and then headed back to the race to watch the leaders finish up for the day. They broke a new course record finishing in about 3 Hours and 49 minutes. After watching them finish up we headed back to the end of the bike course to wait for Barb to finish up. We saw her and she mentioned that she couldn't keep any food down. We ran down to the transition area and saw her making her way out on the run. After seeing her start off we headed farter up the run course so we could see her at about the 6 mile mark of the run. I walked with her for a bit and the she continued on her way. We moved our spectating party to about the 7.5 mile mark saw her one last time before heading back to the finish.

We knew that she could break 8 hours if she kept moving. Other friends of Barb's were there too and so one of them went back to run with her. When we saw her coming we all starting screaming and cheering and she gave us a triumphant fist pump and ran through the finish line. The announcer said that she finishing in 7:59:30 making the 8 hour cut off by 30 seconds.

She was awesome and it was a really fun day. I took about 250 pictures and hopefully I got a few that work. I'll have a gallery up on SmugMug within the next few days/weeks depending on how much time I have to go through them. I'll have at least a few up soon though.

Alright with that, the duty of working on my talk calls and so I must go. Congrats again to Barb it was a really fun day!

Amazing.

Just got home from spectating Barb's first 1/2 Ironman.

Congrats girl. You are incredible.

Stay tuned for more spectating details coming your way tomorrow!

Good Apartments Do Exist

It's like it's all coming together. Like the plan we set in motion 6 years ago is finally coming around.

Yesterday after a day of looking at small, dark craphole apartments we found THE apartment. It has everything on our list: 3 blocks from a train stop, exactly in the neighborhood we wanted, 1 mile exactly from the lakefront path, central air, big bedrooms, WOOD BURNING fireplace, dishwasher, back deck...and even somethings we didn't care about like two bathrooms...one being off the main bedroom....YAY! no more hopping around in a towel or a robe trying to figure out in which bedroom is the outfit you wanted to wear all the while hoping no one is peeping through your windows. Oh AND FREE laundry (it's not in the apartment but just a few flights down so it's good)! We are going to be near Belmont & Seminary which is my favorite neighborhood in the city. After thinking about it a little bit we decided to forego Lincoln Square for awhile longer and stick to Lakeview which after a few moves in the city and lots of walks is still my favorite place to be. Plus the commute downtown to work will be shorter.

We won't get to move in until the end of August, but it was like the person living there currently was barely living there, there was no furniture, clothes or anything, so we might be able to work getting in there earlier.

It's a great place, and while it doesn't have stainless steel appliances or granite counter tops it's way an upgrade for us, and we don't own it so it's fine. And unbelieveably in our price range. I couldn't believe that that apartment was in the same range and some other ones I had seen yesterday. So yay! I cannot freakin' wait to get out of this apartment.

I still have this nagging dissertation talk that I am giving in now less than two weeks which I am just about sick about. But now that the job stuff and apartment stuff is all taken care of I can really concentrate on gettng that done and understood. I'm going to work on the talk this morning and then going to the beach in the afternoon. I mean I only get a few more weeks of daily freedom and so I should use them wisely.

Oh and no running yesterday because we celebrated the new pad with margaritas at El Jardin. whee! Thanks to Dad and Sue for going with to look at the apartment, knowing that there were four pairs of eyes looking at the place I know that we weren't fooled.

New Big News

Well. Yes, awhile ago I was all, "I got a job offer." I know right? no exclamation points or anything....very un-LeahC like. It was because I hadn't accepted it yet as while I had been waiting to hear from them another company had come around with an open position, so I wanted to see what their interview process was like so that I could have some comparisons since I haven't had a real job in 6 years and back then I just took the first one I interviewed with because I was 21 and needed a job. Holy ass...that sentence was *really* long.

So I went through the second company's interview and it was, I don't know.....fine...uncomfortable....I had to do some logic problems on the fly, which quite honestly didn't go so well. I walked around the offices and they were just kinda I don't know...not me I guess. The original company invited me to have lunch with them on Tuesday (that would be yesterday) and so I accepted because I really wanted to see how they rolled. And it was awesome. All the people that work there are really nice and seem really great. After talking with the HR woman and finding out about insurance and blah blah blah, I told her I was in and I signed the paperwork I needed to sign.

The position is for a software apprentice where one (one being me) will learn how to develop software. They take people that probably have the ability to learn, but just don't have the skills right now to write software. So that's like the definition of me, and I hope that I can get a lot out of it and learn quickly. I mean whatever happened to apprentices? That's how people did anything back in the day and so where did that go? In graduate school it was kinda like, here, "Go do this. Go on go. What do you mean you don't know how to do anything? I don't care, show me some plots" Ok that's really an exaggeration as there is a lot of help in physics...but kinda only if you go after it. Anyways. I think the idea is fantastic and I'm really excited to start.

So. That's the big news. On August 11th, I will be one of a great group of people....oh yeah...and our friend Jake who I always talk about works there too so that's wacky fun. He's actually the one that led me on to the software apprentice position.

The scarier business on this end is that in two weeks from tomorrow at 10am I will be defending my thesis...meaning I have a talk to write! I mean it's written but lots needs to be added to it....AND it's already really long. Get ready graduate student committee, get comfy cause it's going to be awhile :-)

No running yesterday but we do plan on getting something in tonight.

Evening Running & Afternoon Walking

Yesterday after working on my talk most of the morning, I took all my heavy bags (computer bag plus I decided to reread Atlas Shrugged which is *giant* but oh so delicious inside!) all around the city with me. I stopped at a Panera for a salad and then headed down to Lincoln Park. I love living in a city where you can always discover new places. I have run on the lakefront for years and I never just saw what would happen if I tried to get off the path and got slightly west when I was south of Diversey. Go figure there is a lagoon type thing there with a nice path around it (took some pictures with the new hotness that is iPhone...although still not much signal indoors which is making leah frustrated...I think that's an ATT thing though) :


I am guessing the path around it is only about a mile, but it was really nice. I sat and read for awhile, talked to an older guy named Mike about the city in general, walked around the lake and just *really* enjoyed the day. Then I headed back north. On the way I stopped at the Lakeview Athletic Club to see what they were all about. Super nice and swanky. We don't know where we are going to move but after yesterdays walk I am rethinking Lakeview instead of Lincoln Square....we'll have to see what happens in the next week.

Jason and I met at my Dad's apartment and then we went for a run. We did 3.8 miles and we went back to the Lagoon because I wanted Jason to see it. We didn't go fast as our legs were a bit heavy from the day before.

Today I am still working on my talk (seriously, I can't wait till this is over. I don't know how much information to put in the talk and I'm getting frustrated in general), and then I have a lunch meeting. That's all that's on the schedule today.

New iPhone, Hellboy & Some Running

On Friday the nerd boy husband of mine and I got up early and went to the ATT store to stand in line for the new iPhone. That's right. We did. It was actually really fun. We stood in front of some really fun people and the time didn't go to slow. There was some slight anger because the phones couldn't be activated until Friday afternoon, but whatever, it finally started working that afternoon and we were happy. Although....I am having some really bad signal strength issues. When I enable the 3G network I get one bar or No Service. When I switch that off I get about 3 bars of service where I am sitting right now. In Evanston last night we had really strong 3G service, so I am hoping that the problem is the Chicago towers and that it will be fixed very soon...because damnit...a phone in the end should be able to be spoken on..and if you can't do that what's the point?

On Sunday we went to Jake and the Lovely LaurA!'s to watch Hellboy. Then from there we all went to see Hellboy 2 in Evanston. It was a really fun afternoon and as always, super good times with those kids.

We even did some running this week! Not enough I suppose, but when is it really ever enough. I keep saying this week, this week we'll get the mileage back to where we want it. I think we'll have to sign up for a marathon to really make that happen though because it keeps you honest. Last night after HellboyFest Jason and I came home and ran down to the lakefront path and finished our run out there. We did probably just over 7 miles. Then we walked back home....why? Because it was so freakin' nice outside! For the week...eh...but cest la vie :


This week, I have a lunch thing going on tomorrow (I think) but that's about it. Scarily my PhD defense date is rapidly approaching. The talk is *basically* written, but needs to be spiced up and some of the slides need to be changed so I have to do that. When I think about giving that talk I also think about throwing up in my mouth a little....very nerve wracking! Cause that's just about it with this crazy PhD train...crazy talk I know.

So that's it. Here's to Monday :-)

Test post

Sent from my iPhone

Still on Schedule?

Well, not exactly. The holiday put a little kink in our planned versus actual running distance :

The only good thing about last week was that I ran 8.5 miles around the lake at my Aunt's house. It's really hilly there and because I'm so brilliant I went at like 2pm with no shade, no water and no one coming to bring me water. I almost made it the whole way without walking but about 6.5 miles in I was pretty beat so I walked/ran the rest of the way back to the house. Then we enjoyed the lake house and then tried to run 4 miles on Sunday which was *hilarious* after skiing and playing for the previous 2 days.

Monday and Tuesday we ran 5 miles. We'll take today off and then see what happens for the rest of hte week. I would like to get 30 miles in which I think should be pretty possible.

I will leave you with a picture from Gay Pride 2008:

Yes! I'm still here!

but busy :-)

Lots going on these days with futures and families and so on and so forth. My Dad, Sue, Jason and I all went to my Aunt Donna's house for a vacation and it was really fun. The working man couldn't come until Thursday night but the rest of us went on Wednesday morning. They have a such an awesome house. There are about 100 different places you can hole up and read a book. Lots of swings and hammocks and porches to sit on. I did some wave boarding as well. I used to ski every summer but haven't since high school so it was nice to know I could still get up on the board. It's like snow boarding kinda but being pulled by a boat.

Alright, I have to do some reading.

Reflection