Friends and Politics

You know there is nothing more annoying when friends won't listen to you when you make good points about politics. You know there is nothing more wonderful than arguing with friends about politics.

Mike and Barb came over for dinner last night. They were impressed with our new big place which made Jason and I happy. I made up some chicken enchiladas, with a couple of side dishes.

We ended up watching part of the RNC and I get too emotional when talking about politics and I always have (Jason and I have gone rounds in the past on issues) and I do like to play the "the other guy has no good points" angle. But always fun to talk about...frustrating....but fun and makes me know I want to know more about each team so I can argue better....read: well you're guy is old is not a good argument.. (well good enough anyways). Plus it's hard when you are arguing with people that are not going to shift an inch....it's not those people you have to talk to. It's the people that are on the fence....and those that don't live in Illinois where it might make a difference (Hi Mom!!!) that you have to talk to.

Today is Friday. Woot. Tonight Jason and I are going to be very exciting and do some laundry and watch Psych...which no one won my fun little game yesterday. Cloudy...Chance of Murder is an episode title from that show.

In other news our new mattress is too comfortable. I can't get out of bed in the mornings.

Tomorrow we go to Fort Wayne to be with Jason's parents and help out. Jason's grandfather's funeral is on Monday an the viewing is on Sunday. We are going early just to be there and help where we can.

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

Cloudy...Chance of Murder

No...just rain. Here comes fall in Chicago.

Anyone get the title reference? 5 points if you did.

Yesterday we had plans to run. But 5 hours of sleep and a full work day later we changed our mind. Plus I truly believe that exercise programs should start on Mondays. We did decide to go to the store though...and here is why I love where we live. We don't live super close to a grocery store....although I just measured the distance and it's less than a mile to the closest store. We didn't want to move our car last night because of the Cubs game and so we just decided to walk it. The Kansas kids are coming over for dinner tonight so we needed stuff for that and then stuff for dinner last.  We figured it wouldn't be that much and it wouldn't be that hard to carry it back. So we just did that. People don't walk enough in general I think. Jason and I walk *everywhere*....but something as easy as walking a mile or so to the grocery store and walking back....I don't think it happens that often. 

So that was good. 

We had a great time breaking in the new kitchen although we again have a super sensitive fire alarm that doesn't have a button to shut it off, or it's broken or something. We spent the rest of the night watching the Cubs lose another game and the Republican Convention. We watched both with our jaws on the floor. 

Today another work day but Mike and Barb are going to come over and tell us all about the Ironman race and watch the opening of the NFL season. Looking forward to seeing those crazy kids. 

Alright, I'm off....oh but I'm on facebook now. I have joined the dark side. 

Goodbye

This morning my grandpa died. We've been expecting it for some time, but it was still quite sad to get the call this morning.

My grandfather was an amazing man. He was an father, a grandfather, and a great grandfather. He was an electrical engineer and a veteran. His legacy is seen not only in his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but in a historic quest that has been followed by people around the world. The Mars Rover, which has explored the rough terrain of Mars far longer than anyone believed possible, contains parts created by my grandpa.

He made his own telescope, a reflection of both his skill and his imagination.

His humor was subtle yet omnipresent, his nature always quiet.

Above all, the best gift is that all that is found in me. We share a sense of humor, a scientific mind, and a quiet nature and for that I thank him. I thank him for being a wonderful and caring grandpa. I thank him for helping raise a wonderful mother.

We will miss you, Grandpa.

Rest in Peace.

Wake Up Call

This morning at 5am our phone rang. Our phone has this thing where it speaks who is calling...so it's CALL FROM _______. This morning, the phone said, Jason's Folks (We programed them into our phone's address book so that is what it says when they call).

Jason flipped out of bed as he knew it was his mom calling.

Jason's grandfather died around 5am this morning.

This weekend we will be in Fort Wayne for the funeral. Jason's grandfather was really an incredible man. He was a really quiet and funny man and I'm so sad to see him go. I saw a lot of Jason in his grandfather...wait...no...a lot of Jason's grandfather in him? I guess it should go that way. I hope Jason's mom knows we are thinking of her all the time in this tough time.

Now some bullet points...because I'm sleepy and well...it seems all the rage on the internets these days....oooh and I'll use a numbered list instead of just points. There see, I'm different

1. I think humans are like water and just fill the space they live in. This apartment is much bigger than our old place and yet we have managed to fill it up. I think it's true going the other way.
   
2. I say we have a lot of stuff....and we do....but since we moved 2 years ago we have gotten rid of a *ton* of books. So that's good.
   
3. Our new mattress looks like the Enterprise (so sayth Jason). It's huge and almost as high as our headboard. I guess we can get a different box spring that's half the height....but I don't know I kinda like feeling like a queen.
   
4. RCN came and hooked up our cable and internet last night. The internet seems faster, and the digital cable is just as good as Comcast. Plus I don't have to be with evil evil Comcast.
   
5. I went to the Cubs game last night. I mistakenly wore jeans and was sitting in the Terrace reserve behind home plate where there was no moving air. Lots of sweat.
   
6. The Cubs have lost 4 in a row. This is after my Dad has bought airplane tickets to be home for the playoffs.
   
7. This apartment has nothing wrong with it. Seriously. You know you move into a vintage charm apartment and there is a lot of "Wow....that's weird we have no water pressure or hot water. Awesome." or "Wait....what is that shelf doing there?". There is *none* of that here.
   
8. We sat outside two nights ago and the folks from upstairs came down to introduce themselves. They are an older couple and just wanted to let us know that if their music is too loud just to let them know as apparently the previous tenents just would slip notes under the door. Apparently the woman that lived here was from New York City....go figure. I'm kidding. They couple owns The Smoke Shack and The Tonic Room in Lincoln Park which is kinda cool.
   
9. Speaking of New York. Jason and I went to this place called New York Deli on Clark and Oakdale. The owner's name is David and he's really really friendly. He was born and raised in NYC but has lived all over the place. GREAT sandwiches and really good conversation. We will definently be back at that place.
10. The commute to work is so much better from here. On the way home we get on the brown at the beginning of the Loop and so a seat is to be had.....probably will be a little on the crowded side in the mornings though...but so great to not have to do a transfer from bus to train or vice-versa
11. Running......starting tonight!
12. Work still going great and I'm learning a ton. My friend Jake gave a talk yesterday and did a nice job. He must have been a teacher or something in his past as he just has genral bullet points on his slides and then talks about them and not a bullet point for every word that comes out of his mouth...like I do :-)
    

Alright, well there are the top 12 things going on in these parts. And it's time for these crazy kids to get to work!

Awesomeness

So many awesome things happened this weekend. 

First of all. This guy. Is an Ironman. Jason and I were glued to our twitter feeds all day on Sunday as we stepped around boxes waiting to see how he was doing. Congratulations my friend. You are crazy awesome. 

This weekend was moving weekend. I hate moving.  There is always the need for one more box, or more packing tape and where the hell is the Sharpie marker so I can mark this box of crap that I don't care about (literally Jason wrote "Random Shit" on one of the boxes). We moved our movers from Sunday afternoon to Saturday evening with a show up time of 6:30-8:30pm. We did some errands and packed most of the day. We had some Buger King for lunch (seriously I only seem to crave the King on moving day) and then my phone rang around 1:45. It was the movers, saying they could be there in an hour. I was like....uh....well no that won't work on our end as I was looking around all that shit still not in boxes. So we told them we could be ready in 2 hours and got on the packing. 

3:30 came around and Jason and I looked around, realized there was nothing we could do until they got there and so we headed outside to enjoy an Amstel Light. As we walked out the front door we saw a big ass yellow moving van, and realized they were out guys. We waved them down the alley, and an hour and 20 minutes later we were telling them where to go for the next apartment. (seriously people, hire movers, it's not that expensive and so easy).  

We went over to the new apartment, and the movers showed up about 15 minutes later. We are on the second floor apartment and so even more thrilled to have movers at that point. They quickly got all of our furniture in, although the door did have to come off the bedroom for our leather chair (the movers went though the back which is where our bedroom is) and we signed off that all was good. Locked up and ran back to the old apartment to run a mop over the floors, get any other last minute things, grab the cat and head back over. 

Saturday night we barely had the energy to flip the mattress over and fall down on it and pass out sans sheets, and we had to use the couch cushions for pillows as we had no idea where our pillows were. Sunday morning cranky from lack of comfortable sleep, we drug ourselves out of bed and looked into the second bedroom where we had the movers put all the boxes and wanted to curl up and cry as it looked impossible. 

But one box at a time, and we made progress and by the end of the day yesterday most of it was done except for the things that we want to put on the walls. 

Now that I have rambled on for so long I must go.....but let me say this. By far...this is the best apartment I have ever lived in. We are so happy there so far and just can't wait to keep on enjoying the apartment and the neighborhood. More to come about some restaurants we tried, the upstairs neighbors who own The Smoke Shack (Smoke House?) and The Tonic Room in Lincoln park, and the Mexican restaurant a block away that serves pitchers of margaritas.

New Apartment Needs Stuff

We all know that stuff is bad. Ok, maybe I just think stuff is bad. I don't even think it's bad, but I'm three days out of a move and so right now all the stuff is sitting in my dining room and I'm wondering what would happen if I took a match to it and walked out...well I mean assuming that just the stuff burned and not the apartment as I'm not really looking to add that piece of crazy to my resume. 

But aside from just the stuff we own, our new apartment is a lot bigger, including a second full bedroom and bathroom. By full bedroom I mean not these closet sized bedrooms we have been utilizing (...uh....utilizing...really I used that word?) for the past 8 years or so. In fact we think it's going to be big enough for some queen sized mattresses along with our office furniture...but might be a bit tight......WAIT! We have queen sized mattresses that are really uncomfortable. If we move those to the second bedroom...we would have to get new mattresses that are comfy...like clouds. 

On Tuesday we went to the apartment to get the keys and the apartment is all ready for us to move in. I wish they would have really known that it was going to be ready because then we could have moved on Saturday. After just sitting in the apartment for about an hour we walked around our new hood with huge smiles plastered on our faces. We walked by a mattress store and we decided to see what they had going on. Of course I'm brilliant (I mean I do have PhD you know) and I laid on the most expensive mattress first. You know what the means right? Every other mattress in the store sucks ass. So we laid on a bunch of them and tried out the memory foam ones and some other types. Finally we settled on a pillow top type thing that had all that kind of foam stuff in it. It was really comfortable and when we got home we wondered how we could have ever slept on our current mattress. The place we got the mattress was called Sleep City right on Clark just south of Belmont. The owner's name is Charlie and so far I would highly recommend the place. Charlie was really nice and owned that store and another Sleep City on Diversey. We could have had the mattress whenever we wanted but as our bed frame won't be there still Sunday we have to wait till Monday. 

We also have a second bathroom and so will need to get bathroom stuff in there and so we looked around Linens' and Things. Kinda wish my mom was up here from Florida to help pick out stuff. I think she would get as psyched up as me about little things like shower curtain hooks (yes I might be one of those people). Understandably most people do not....but I suppose most mothers and daughters do. She is going to come to Chicago for Mother's day in the spring though and help us get some flowers and stuff for our back porch. 

Our apartment is almost completely packed up and ready to go, which is awesome and terrifying. We are going to take our electronics over to the new place before the move I think and I'm going to call the movers today and see if there is *any* way we can move our move up from Sunday to Saturday. I'm sure we can't, but I might as well ask. 

Alright. How about that for a ramblin' post. Stay tuned for our next installment when we talk about how we are pretty sure we are going to join a gym similar to Average Joe's in Dodgeball.

The Office

Not the TV show....rather our office at home. It's looking like it's about halfway done. It's been funny reading peoples blogs and twitters when they talk about moving. It's such a horrible process and everyone thinks they own too much stuff and there is always this feeling of we'll never have enough boxes. My cousin gave us a ton of small boxes but not many large or medium sized ones. I don't know how she moved her stuff, but she owns way less than I do I guess. So Jason and I ran over to Home Depot last night at 9pm to buy some larger sized boxes. If you saw a girl in a ratty IU t-shirt and some rockin' pink shorts, that was me. 

We are being very good about throwing stuff away, but there are just some things that I'm like...hmm....would I care if I let this go? No, but that doesn't mean I want to let it go. But I hate owning stuff....so anyways, it's annoying. We need to get the office completely emptied then we can move some boxes back into there to get it out of the dining room. Dawn mentioned that professional movers take the boxes first so I'm going to call them and find out if that is in fact the case because if it is we are closer than we thought. 

Tonight we are going to pick up the keys for the new place. We are wondering if they are just giving us keys or if they are giving us keys if the old tenant has moved out...in which case....well we can go sleep on the floor in our new place :-). I'm so excited to get out of our old place. I just wish it be over already. I'm always a nervous wreck on moving days....but this might be easier as we have professional movers and so hopefully most everything is done so I can step back and just watch the moving magic happen. 

Great Weekend...But Sad Ending

This weekend Jason and I headed to Fort Wayne where his parents threw us a big PhD graduation party. They invited so many people including a lot of Jason's teachers from middle and high school (Jason's dad is a teacher at the school Jason went to so knows all of these people). It was fun to meet all of them. So a big thank you to them. Also want to thank Lisa, Evin, Mike and Barb for making the trek from Chicago to help celebrate. 

Our best friend Joe and his new girlfriend Heather also came. Every time I have seen Joe lately it has been a lot of..."Hey, yeah I'm tired. What's up." So it was so great to see him with all the stress melted away. We all stayed in Fort Wayne on Saturday night and enjoyed a big ihop breakfast on Sunday morning. 

After breakfast we headed back over to Jason's parents house where we found that Jason's grandfather had taken a bad turn. Jason's mom talked with one of her brothers and it was decided that he go into hospice care as his quality of life has deteriorated enough that it's time to make that decision. It's looking like we will back in Fort Wayne in the next few days. So a sad Sunday.

We stayed for awhile in Fort Wayne to help out as much as we could but then decided we had to get home as our packing needed to be an expedited process as we don't know what's going to happen in the next week. We got home around 5pm and just decided to not cook anything this week and so we packed up the entire kitchen. We left out a couple of plates and bowls and glasses but other than that everything is in a box and broken down. We have put everything into the dining room which as I was looking at last night I was realizing was probably a bad decision as you can't get to our furniture in the living room. SO. I think once we get the office packed (tonight and tomorrow) we can move all the boxes into there and then there will be a path for the furniture to get back out of the house. Getting the kitchen done was a huge step. The office is still a *disaster* but that should be done soon as well and then I think we'll be just about good to go which is nice. I'm starting to get really nervous because I haven't heard back from the dude that I am supposed to get the keys from so I've got to give him a call back and hopefully get a hold of him. 

So that's what's going on here. Kinda a lot and just hoping the week isn't *too* stressful. 

Wait...didn't I finish school?

Uh...apparently not and the hours in the days don't seem to be enough.

For some reason...and the reason is Jason's procrastination ways...theAdviser wants the thesis submitted NOW. I also want it done and so I'm glad he's pushing hard for this to get fixed and turned in. The deal is that your committee reads your thesis and then marks it up with comments etc, you fix all that and then submit it...turn in mounds of paper work and then if all the eggs are in the correct basket your thesis is accepted by the graduate school and 3 months later they mail you your degree.

So Right. I'm on the first step. Earlier in the evening I got off the phone with one of my committee members who wanted to go through the thesis commets in person and so I have all the corrections in hand. Some are just typo corrections and some are not as trivial.

Tonight I have to make some plots to send in to the reviewers for my publication and so my plan is to get that done. Then tomorrow I'm going to get going on the thesis corrections. Hopefully it's all done by the end of the night...whenever that might be. I also have to write the acknowledgments which is a non-trivial endeavor

Jason and I managed to squeeze in a 3 mile run this evening and are just going to watch the cubs have some dinner (which is going to be *awesome* as we are trying to eat all the food we have left before we move...so Mac & Cheese it is) and then try to get to bed at a reasonable hour and not think about the disaster that is our apartment at the moment.

Looking Better

Well Ok, obviously, this beautiful newness wasn't all me. It was time to finally get a new template, although from there I was able to make some good changes (just say they are good). I'll just keep it here for now and as I learn more or whatever maybe I'll keep changing it, for now though I think it's good and I like the new simple look.

Yesterday was just a typical Monday morning. The new apprentice started and so I'm not longer the newest employee...even if it is only by a week. I finished reading the HTML book and I'm moving onto some Rails/Ruby stuff as well as starting to work with a dude on updating the design on the Obtiva website.

After work Jason and I walked home like we like to do. The plan was to run to Powells to sell some books as they said their buyer would be there after 4:30. I told Jason to call to make sure as it's not in our neighborhood....he did and apparently the buyer left at 5pm. WTF. Apparently this magical buy will be back on Wednesday and will be there all day. Those books that Powells doesn't buy we'll take to the most excellent used book store on Clark and Wellington(?). Last time he just took all the left overs we had and gave us some cash. Nice guy.

Tonight I have a phone conference with one of my thesis committee members to go through the corrections to my thesis. My goal to have it submitted by Friday. I finished up some other things for theAdviser last night for the publication and so maybe this could start to be the end of all that stuff.....we'll see.....it's seemingly always something else.

Jason packed up all the CDs and DVDs last night and so we are getting there, one step at a time. We also decided to cancel our Comcast cable as they are super expensive and wouldn't give us the triple play deal even though we were moving....which I don't understand. In our new neighborhood we can get RCN so we did that and got DVR added on as well as The Big10 Network, and the NFL network so that should be fun.....although IU is going to be super crappy in bball this year....so maybe not the year to have it.

Alright, well on to Tuesday...or 13 day before we are out of this crappy apartment (I already feel bad for my future children as I know they are going to be all, "MOM I KNOW ABOUT THAT CRAPPY APARTMENT. Why do we have to drive by it again? We know we know...you didn't have any money and now you think it's funny".) Alright, LeahC out.

What's Up!

That's right...it's probably going to look a little crazy around these parts as I attempt to take somethings I have learned at work and apply it here in my tiny corner of the web. I'm guessing every time you come here things will look different :-) Thanks for the patience. 

Oh ... blog update. Ran 5 miles yesterday although ended it with a screaming headache, gave us 12 miles on the week. 

Had a great weekend with the Obtiva family outing on one of the boats on lake Michigan...had a crazy busy Sunday as we had tons to do and got through lots of packing. We are moving in 13 days (!!!) which is uber exciting. 

That's all for now!

Fun Evenings and a Packed Weekend

The last two nights have been good times in the LeahC/JasonR households. On Wednesday night we went to Wildfire for dinner where we enjoyed too much food and way too much wine to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary (I can't believe it's 4 years already!).

Last night Jason had drinks with his work peeps and I went along just cause that's how I roll. Home late last night and I fell asleep on the couch watching the Olympics.

This weekend should be fun as there is an Obtiva family outing on a boat on Lake Michigan to enjoy the air and water show, but there is also going to be lots of packing as well as a trip to Fermilab to pick up somethings from my adviser and drop off stuff to take back to Bloomington to get signed and turned in.

Tonight we are going to run and do some packing. Super fun!

Wow....I'm bad at blogging in the early hours. Ah well.

Blogging at NIght?

Wait...running at night? Both? 

Wow...it's been over 6 years since I have been on a regular schedule. Not that I haven't been worked harder than a red headed step child over that time, but it was all the time and not in one block. So I could say, hey time for a break, so let's go for a run at 2 pm and then come back and finish things up. I don't even think I work very well with that kind of schedule however as I'm pretty driven by schedules, and todo lists and it helps to be like, ok, every day you get up at 5:30, get ready, go downtown, enjoy the coffee shop, work 8 hours, go home, run, eat go to bed. It's just funny to get used to again. 

So today that schedule listed above is just about what we did. I woke up at 5:20 and dozed in and out until the alarm went off at 6am. Then I went and enjoyed the Corner Bakery and read the paper and a book for work. Then it was another enjoyable day in the Obtiva studio where I got a new MacBook (which was a total surprise as I didn't know I would be getting a new laptop)  and did some reading as well as shadowing two of the dudes that work there. 

I met Jason at his building and we came home, and went out for probably about a 3.5 or so mile run. And now it's time to relax, watch some Olympics, eat some frozen pizza and get ready to do it all again tomorrow!

Quickly!

The first day at the new job was awesome. Really good people that work there....but I am noticing that now that I am working there isn't going to be all the lalala.....I think it's 12:57 and I'll blog now. The routine will fall into place though as time goes by.

Up early this morning to beat the rush downtown and to do some reading.

3 miles on the schedule for tonight.

Unplugged

Well it's been awhile since the ole' JasonLeahRun has been updated. After the defense last week I just wanted to unplug for a bit as the weight of that PhD was finally off my shoulders and it would be a week until my new job started. So that's just what I did.

I first want to thank everyone in my family for coming to support me and watch my dissertation presentation (usually no family goes to that, and I had both parents, step parents and inlaws there) and hang out with Jason and I in Bloomington. It was so nice having all of you there. A big thank you to Rick, my adviser, as without his help, guidance and patience there is no way I would have finished the program. Lastly...of course Jason, thank you....you are my everything.

So there, now that I got my awards speech out of the way, what else has been happening in LeahC's world....quickly as it's been awhile!

After the defense Jason and I stayed in Bloomington by ourselves and walked all over campus and went to check out the dorms we had lived in our freshman year and all the places that we loved so much while we were living there. The weekend after the defense was my cousin's wedding which was awesomely fun although I think although the shoes I wore completely completed the dress outfit, I think they also completely broke my toes....ah well, as my aunt says, it's painful to be beautiful sometimes (especially for those of us that usually walk around in Converse and patagonia flip flops). My cousin had a whole wedding weekend with a brunch and a cubs game the Sunday after the wedding which was really fun....after the Cubs game Jason and I came home and passed out around 8pm.

Monday I had planned on doing nothing, but with me that always lasts for about an hour. For the rest of the day I walked around the city and headed to Borders to get some Photoshop books as my dad got me the Creative Suite 3 for my graduation present (I'm *so* excited about it...but oh so much to learn!). Tuesday morning I headed out to Michigan to my aunt and uncle's lake house which was a total blast! I just played with my little cousins for 2 days including taking the 8 year old (she's almost 9) on a walk around the lake to go to the candy store....it's about 5 miles around. She's quite the little trooper though and made with only minimal complaining :-)

Thursday I helped my dad and Sue run some errands as they were leaving on Friday morning. Friday I really did nothing until about 2pm when I went down to Wicker Park to sit there and read for a few hours while I waited for Bridgette to come into town for the weekend.

We have had a good time with Bridgette these last few days. She's still sleeping and so I am thinking that I successfully wore her out yesterday like I had hoped to do. We got up early and went to get manicures and pedicures, then headed downtown where we walked through millennium park over to the lakefront path and then onto the architectural tour which although expensive...was really really fun even for this Chicago native. From there we jumped onto the bus, back to our apartment to change, then walked through West Fest a few times and then back to Ashland to get back on the bus to go East. Off at the brown line, then we walked through our new neighborhood and showed Bridgette our new apartment...seriously we are going to be arrested for stalking soon enough as we keep doing walk by and drive bys. From there we walked into the thick of Wrigleyville, noticed that we are really close to a Penny's noodles, and then had a beer at a bar. From there it was off to Matsuya for dinner with Bridgette's aunt who is awesome and bought us dinner AND gave us a ride home. THANKS VICKI!!!

In sad news, Jason's grandfather is very very sick and so he headed to Fort Wayne today to be with his mom and to hopefully see his grandfather. I think he might have gotten a little better yesterday evening, but I'll know more when I talk to the JMan.

So that brings us to today. Sunday. You know what comes after Sunday. Monday. And this particular Monday is super special because I start my new job at Obtiva. I'm pretty nerved up about it, but as the people that work there are some of the nicest people that I have met I'm guessing they will make it pretty comfortable when I start. So that should be a really really exciting and fun day.

So that's it. Bridgette just woke up and so we are going to walk to a diner to get some breakfast and then we are heading back downtown for some shopping and some beach time!

Oh running...yeah not so much. I don't care though, I have been basking in the glow of being finished with graduate school. Running will be getting going again shortly. Maybe the name of this blog should be, jasonleahneverrun.....well maybe not.

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

Weekend Review

A great/busy/crazy weekend. On the running front we were perfect for our weekend plans. On Saturday we did a nice easy 3 mile run around the neighborhood. After that we headed downtown to go to the Taste of Chicago. We of course had to keep buying tickets because the beer is so damn ticket heavy :-) We had a bum give us a little math puzzle and of course followed by, "If you are thinking of the number 4, and I think you are, maybe you have some tickets for me...?", so we gave him our last two tickets. From the Taste we walked to Burnham harbor and met up with the Dad and the Stepmom and their old Chicago sailing friends. From there we went back north to get our car, then drove home and hand a nice relaxing Saturday evening.

Sunday morning we got up early, I submitted the coding project I had been working on and then we dove over to the lakefront path to start our run. We did the full 9 miles even though neither of us were feeling it. Always nice to get through the runs where you don't feel so good, or more to the point not very motivated. I find it difficult to get pumped when there is no race in the future that we are training for. But either way we got through it. I don't know what's on the table for this week because we are going out of town for the holiday. I am going to try and do some runs around the lake at my Aunts house. It's nice and hilly over there so it might be more run/walking that pure running. Here's how our week ended up looking in my beautiful graph form:
After our run we headed down to Belmont/Broadway for the annual Gay Pride Parade. We ate breakfast at The Melrose diner and then to our Monsignor Murphy's, our old hangout. My Dad and Sue joined us as well as Jake and the lovely LaurA!. We had a good time as we do every year. I think everyone comes out of the woodwork for the parade and I always spend 5 minutes catching up with everyone that I haven't seen for a year.

This week should be one of the most relaxing in my life. I have *nothing* to do and so I taking the week of. I still have to write my dissertation defense talk although it's just about done and just needs to be updated a little.

Run, Projects & Taste

I have been working on a programming project since Wednesday and spent all day yesterday holed up in my apartment working on it. Needless to say I was itching to get outside for a run this morning.

I took music with which I don't do much anymore, but I do always remember how much I like the music once I have it with me. I chose some "running" mix playlist that I have. I think at one point I was very intune with picking songs that start off slow, picking up in the middle and then cooling back off in the end. True to form, I started off with some Colin Hay and hit up some California Love in the middle. I am having some shin pain which is usually a sign that my shoes are bad. These aren't that old though so I'm kind of surprised. I have been playing tennis in them though instead of keeping running shoes for running only so that might be a problem. I went about 3.9 miles and felt good otherwise throughout. I'm going to probably be short a few miles this week from my goal mileage, but that's ok.

After I got back from running, I fixed the final thing that had to be in place on the programming project I am working on. I had a flash when I was running (that happens all the time), and when I got home I tried it and lo and behold all 5 things work that needed to work. I'm pretty excited that that's done. I still have to fix how files are read in and the output and whatever, but the brunt of the project is done.

Since I am done with that for the most part, my dad and I are going to have a city day this afternoon and head downtown for the opening of the Taste and then maybe go see a movie. Tough times for my dad and his sister and well everyone in the family. My grandpa needs to move into an assisted living place and is refusing to do it. His wife has mid-stage Altzheimer's and he is 90 years old and can't really take care of her. But he's refusing to do anything about it. It got a little exciting at the beginning of the week because he was in the hospital and his wife was driving all over the place even though she shouldn't be driving anywhere. So we are all trying to deal with that the best we can.

So yes. Happy Friday all.

They Can't All Be Perfect

Well after a few good weeks of running yesterday didn't go so well. We did 5 miles but it was really slow and pathetic. I think we will take today off and try and get in 6 tomorrow morning just to give our legs a bit of a break since they were so tired last night.

Not much else new. Just working on some work stuff and Jason is enjoying the yearly conference activities at his company and that's just about it.

Late Night, Early Morning

Jason had a work function last night and so I hung out with my Dad and Sue until after the cubs game. I ended up picking Jason up at about 11:30 and we weren't in bed until about midnight. Finally got to sleep around 12:30 and up bright and early at 6:30.

For the rest of the week/weekend I am working on a little coding project, I can't have nothing to do you know. Heaven forbid I take a day off, but ah well I'd get bored anyways. Tonight we have 7 miles on the tap, but we won't be on the lakefront path and so I have to go back through all my old neighborhood routes and find a 7 mile loop.

Alright, well I gotta get back to work. Time it is a tickin' you know.

5, 1, 6.

This morning Jason and I woke up with the sun and drove down to the lakefront and did a 5 mile recoveryish run.

Then my dad came downstairs and he and I played tennis for 1 hour.

Then I came home and submitted my thesis officially. 6 years of work in 208 pages.

I'm so happy. It's been a long road with a few detours, but hot damn I'M DONE! Who knows what happens next, and there were times when I was so close to throwing in the towel, but I just kept thinking about this feeling of accomplishment. It's not everyone that gets a PhD in high energy physics, gets the opportunity to work at the biggest physics lab in the world, travel overseas for conferences, travel to Washington D.C. two years in a row to represent physics graduate students to their congresspeople and all the other cool shit that goes down in a PhD program....all before their 29th year. I mean it's going to be close...but I will be done with all this before that scary fucking age hits :-). Anyways. I will defend the thesis on July 31st and then it will really be done and a new page will be turned.

Today I have some work to do on some other stuff and my Dad, stepmom and I are going to try and get tickets to the Cubs game tonight. (Jason has a fancy dinner thing for work tonight).

So yep. June 24. A good one.

Good? No Great Weekend.

So here we got with our my usual weekend roundup!

On Friday I met up with Jason for lunch as I was back from the lab early enough to make that happen. I spent the afternoon hanging around downtown and just fucking enjoying being mostly done with my thesis, which is the culmination of six years of work. I finally broke down and bought myself a pair of nice sunglasses (they are seriously awesome, I think I could work for the CIA perhaps...and if there are any CIA people reading this I'm still available for any spy work that might be needed). Following my walk I met my dad and sue at a bar near Chicago Ave and then we walked to Jake Melnicks where we met up with Jake and the lovely LaurA! and Jason. A quick dinner there and then it was off to 600 N Michigan for opening night of Get Smart. It's so funny and we all highly recommend it. Ok, well I can't talk for everyone but I highly recommend it, and it's not just because I less than three Steve Carell.

Oh yeah and on Friday afternoon the Cubs won in highly dramtic fashion with a 9th inning walkoff homerun. The Cubs ended up kicking some White Sox ass all weekend, which of course this family loved.

On Saturday Jason and I came down to the 3600 apartment and went for a quick I would say about 2.5 mile run. We hung around here, watching the Cubs and chilling at the lakefront until about 5pm when we headed back to the west side for a relaxing evening in.

Sunday morning we woke up bright and early and headed down to the lakefront at Montrose to get our weekly long run in. These have been around 6 miles for awhile. That was the plan for Sunday but we just felt so damn good we decided to go an extra mile out meaning we ended up at 8 miles. It rained like crazy in the middle of our run which was actually ok because it was still really warm out. I love running in a summer rain storm. I wore my new sunglasses and while I have tried to run in sunglasses before but they always bounced all over the place or just annoyed me, these were just great. They didn't move at all or bounce or anything, so I'm deeming them a good purchase. Now I just have to not lose them.

So ok, nerd girl that I am has a lot of graphs to show you all. Hint Hint...Apple...you need a GPS program....hire me to organize the output of the data! OK, so here we go. First off, the first two on the left are the same that I showed you last week. Simply showing what mileage we planned and what mileage we actually completed and then the total yearly mileage to date, week by week. The new one on the upper right is showing each week what the difference between the Actual Distance-Planned Distance is, granted this one is kind of stupid as there isn't a lot of data right now, but I think the idea of it is good as it's much easier to see how well week by week we are doing keeping above, equal or below our planned mileage (when the bar is above zero = good). Then the final one in the lower right hand corner is showing for each day of the last week how well we did for the planned daily mileage and what we did that day. You can see last week kind of was bad on that front as only one day actually matches up. Click on it to see all the graphs in full size.

Well....Almost

I handed Adviser the thesis this morning. All 206 pages of it. Hot Damn. Of course....as always with this field, there are a *few* more miner things to change. I have gotten up at about 4am the last three days and worked hard on getting that done....but you know...4am is fucking early. By 10am, I've been awake for 6 hours and, in that time (today for example) drove to Batavia, printed out 206 scintillating pages of physics analysis, dropped off some paperwork at another building on the Fermilab campus, played tennis with my "coach" and by "coach" I mean my Dad who really was a tennis coach back in the day, drove to panera, ate breakfast, dropped off said scintillating pages at the hotel where Adviser is staying, back to Panera, worked on getting Dad set up with C++ compliers on his little laptop, and drove back to the city.

Yikes. So I'm just hanging out while my dad naps and wondering if he really wants me to put the Xcode tools on his laptop since it's such a big program. He doesn't have much space left because it seems that he has 10GB worth of pictures on his laptop. So as soon as he wakes up I can talk to him about what he wants to do with that. Maybe it's time those crazy sailor kids got an external harddrive.

Yesterday we ran 4 miles around the neighborhood. So the plan then for the weekend is to do some studying stuff that we have to do, play tennis early tomorrow, and get just a short 2 mile run in. Then Sunday pull out a 6 mile run...bringing us full circle to Monday. Oh...and I have to write the acknowledgments still for my thesis. Thank you to everyone for not killing me over the last 6 years? Maybe just a Fuck this shit, I'm outta here. Nah, I can be more elequent than that...I hope. I actually did start writing it but I ended up starting it and starting to talk about my adviser and how awesome he is and blah blah...and suddenly I was that creepy girl who had written two pages about one person. So I stepped away as the total length for that should be about 2 pages and I have lots of other people to thank!

Alright, so Happy Friday everyone and GO CUBS! They had a stinky series in Florida and so here's to hoping they pick up the pace against that other Chicago baseball team. Alright. LeahC needs to end this post already.

Today is Thursday

Wow. Brilliant title if I do say so myself.

But it's a big day. Well not TODAY. BUT, if today is Thursday, that means tomorrow is Friday which means the day after that is Saturday. The Adviser is going on a 3 week bike trip which starts on Saturday meaning that a final copy of my thesis has to be done by then since I have to turn it into the committee July 1st (one moth before the defense). Needless to say I have been super busy this week getting everything in order with that.

On Tuesday we went to see The Swell Season with a Fermilab friend of ours which was a really good show. We didn't get home until 11:30 or so and I ended up waking up at 3:14am. I remember because it's pi-o-clock. I feel that I frequently wake up at this time, but I think I probably don't really but rather just remember it more when it's 3:14 because I always go, "Wow, look at that, I woke up at pi-o-clock" If I were to wake up at say 3:27, I wouldn't remember because that's just a random time. Anyways. So I dozed on and off until 4am and left at 5am to go to the suburbs. I had to print out another draft of some chapters for the Adviser and then meet him to give him that. Needless to say I was a little tired and out of it yesterday.

I'm back in the burbs today to get some more marked up copies of my thesis. Probably the same deal tomorrow....BUT then...after a final read through of it myself......IT WILL BE DONE. Well that part of it will be done. The defense and the actual degree would still be to come but this is the biggest and hardest part....sorry...I gotta do it.....That's what SHE said!

Running, yes....still going. We went 6 miles again yesterday. While we were out there we ran into this boy playing catch and so chatted with him a little bit. I love living in a city of 3 million people and randomly running into friends. Felt good on the run too which is nice. Same plan tonight, but probably just about 4 miles, then maybe 2 on Saturday and then 6 on Sunday which will bring me to my planned distance for the week.

So yes. That's all from here. Happy 3 days before my thesis is done!

Wait...WHAT...19.5

Yes. I ran 19.5 miles last week. You know. That rounds up to 20. Hot Damn. The woman is getting her running groove back. Hopefully anyways.

I also played tennis four times last week. Starting this week I'm going to play a bit more, doing more training with my Dad rather than just hitting it around. Hopefully I can start to keep it in the court better. Maybe the plan will be to play tennis, take a break and then run with Jason when he gets home from work. This week is also the last week I have to work on my thesis. My adviser is going out of town for three weeks starting Saturday and my thesis is due on July 1st....aka right spot on in the middle of that...meaning that my thesis needs to be done by Saturday. Awesome. It's fine though, I don't think it will be a problem. SO I'll be back at the lab from about 6:30am-2:30pm or so starting tomorrow, then back to Dad's apartment for tennis, running and general fun :-).

So what the hell happened the past few months? Well the Achilles Disaster of 2008 happened. Then thesis work happened. Then severe panic attacks happened. No where in that did running happen. I had started keeping very good track of my mileage and the graphs just have a big sucky flat line in the middle of them:

But I'm getting there. The graphs are starting to turn back up and if you look carefully I ran 6 miles this morning. You know that's over 5! I know CRAZY. So I have a plan to get over 20 miles this week and of course I have started this during the busiest week of probably my life I am guessing, but cest la vie...I'm always fucking busy and running keeps me balanced so I have to try and not let that slip again. I think a lot of the problems that arose aside from being so stressed with work and trying to get a new job and blah blah blah was that I had stopped running. I didn't stop because I wanted to though but because of my Achilles and so now that seems to be better and so I'm going to try and go slowly this time. I made a mistake training for that half marathon as I wasn't ready for that kind of training because I went from zero straight into not necessarily high mileage but hard consistent work outs. And my old lady body apparently revolted. SO. Right. That's the analysis, hopefully that graph has more than 6 miles on it next week.

So ok, Happy Monday everyone. OH and congrats to everyone's favorite Kansas Fans Displaced in Chicago (:-)) for getting through their HIM. Well....yes I know, the weather didn't allow them to finish, but they were almost done with the course and they both were on the run portion of the race and so they got through those horrible sounding hills on the bike course (and of course the swim which when I think about I want to throw up a lot in my mouth). Congrats Kids.

Back to AM running!

This morning Jason and I got up at 5am with the intent to go play tennis. Actually we did that yesterday as well but someone (not me) said, "I'm just going to lay back down in bed and see what it would feel like to go back to sleep" :-). But this morning we were up and on it. Only to find drenched streets and sidewalks from storms during the night. We still headed to the courts thinking maybe they weren't too wet and we could play anyways. They were completely soaked and so we just went and ran instead. We went about 4.5 miles and I felt great. Farthest we went in awhile and pretty smooth sailing for all of it.

Yesterday my stepmom and I lucked out and got some not too pricey tickets to the Cubs game. They won in 11 innings after Reed Johnson got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. That sent their home win streak to 11. It was awesome. They could do it this year. After the game Jason came over to the Dad/Stepmom apartment and we had some pizza, watched some Law and Order and then headed back to the good old Uki-Village.

I am still waiting to get some revisions back from my adviser. I have about a week left to finish my thesis as he will be gone a bike trip the last week of June and completely out of contact. My thesis is due July 1st though so I guess I'll get extra time to make corrections even if he can't take a last look at it. So since I haven't heard from him Sue (that's my stepmom) and I are going to go downtown and hangout. Tonight we are going to hang with Jake and LaurA! to celebrate the fact that I got a job and the thesis is coming to a close. We are going to go get yummy burgers at Blackies and then go see The Incredible Hulk. I saw a preview and noticed that Tony Stark (aka Ironman) has a role it it. It makes Jason wonder if there is going to be an Avengers movie on the way. So that should be fun. Tomorrow is the Wells Street Art Fair which we are going to with Sue's sister Andrea which should be fun.

So yeah, that's all from here. Go go fun times!

Getting Closer to the Next Thing

Last night I found out that the company I interviewed with a week and half ago wants me to join their group. So hell to the hizzah on that one. I still have to find out about salary and benefits and whatnot as that is still a question. But they like me, so that's good and very exciting.

This morning I sent a full draft of my thesis to my adviser. That's right...full draft. Not a section here or there.

That's right. It's all coming to a close.

I didn't play tennis this morning because my Dad went to Florida with his sister to visit their Dad. I might play tonight with Jason though if the courts aren't too crowded. We are going to run for sure. This morning I'm going to work on helping a graduate student in Bloomington get some code to run in batch mode and then this afternoon my stepmom and I are going to go walk around the neighborhood that Jason and I want to move to and get a sense of where exactly we should want to live and were we for sure don't want to live. So that should be fun fun as it's a beautiful day in Chicago!

So yes. Oh...and only 30 days until the 3G iPhone is out!

Tennis, Running & Thesis

Yep. That's all I have been doing. I wish I could be all, "LOOK AT ALL THE FREAKIN' COOL THINGS I AM DOING!" But I'm not so much. My day is usually getting up early, driving to my Dad's apartment and having breakfast. Then my Dad and I go across the street and play tennis for about an hour. Then I go run. I started with just going three miles (it's hard to run after crossing training...and by cross training I mean, shagging tennis balls as I don't so much hit them back). I'm up to 4 miles though and feeling better. After tennis I work on my thesis getting those last few details in place. My Dad coached tennis back in the day and so he has some tips for me. I'm getting better for sure. We are going to do more with the coaching as we are going to get a bag of balls and do more repetitive forehand/backhand/serving type things. But either way I'm getting better.

The thesis is almost done. I have to find a *few* annoying details about things which is taking all the time. But as far as the sections they are all done and written and whatever which is exciting.

Oh yeah. And Jason and I are perhaps planning on getting in line early for the new iPhone. Yes. We are just that nerdy. But whatever, we would totally have one before those who chose to not wait in line...although those smart people will probably be able to walk into the Apple store later in the day and buy one, sans sleeping on the sidewalk on Michigan Ave. As Jason said, "There will be other people in line right? Because if not, then we aren't so much wacky as homeless".

That's all from here. Things are easing back into normal, I'm getting better and starting to actually like tennis, and I'm going to Doctor Leah soon enough!

Running...and Tennis?

I LOVE to play racquetball. Well I really started to love it when I stopped losing every game 15-2. It seems that racquetball has kind of gone away in popularity as it's been tough finding gyms that have nice courts. Jason and I played 2-3 times a week in graduate school and I contend it's one of the best cross training exercises you can do. Anyways, with my dad staying in Chicago he is staying right across the street from some tennis courts and so we thought we would try. We played the last two days. As I have only played racquetball for about 10 years, I tend to try and play tennis that way and get the ball all up in my kooaid. It was a bit too windy today though, but I think I'll get there. If any Chicago people know any racquetball courts let me know in the comments! Either at a gym or if there are courts that you could just use by the hour.

I have run about 16 miles since Monday. I KNOW!!!! I have run the last three days and then on Monday as well. Today was tough as I have been running after we "played" tennis and it was about 90 degrees and it was just tough. I didn't stop though so that's good. I'm going to take tomorrow off and then possibly Sunday as well as we have a pretty packed weekend.

Alright, well all is good here. Have a great weekend all!

Longer Run

Well I'm sans Garmin, just cause I want to be for awhile not because it's broken. Jason and I did go for a longer run yesterday because we lost track of where we were. I was just looking for the next mile marker that is North of Montrose and we never saw and we were all talky talky and so we ended up way past Lawrence and who knows where we were. We never run that far north and so I don't remember where we got to. I'm guessing we went for about 4.5 ... probably more like 4 miles. I know right..funny that anything over 3 miles is an accomplishment.

My thesis work is going well. There are words for everything....whether or not Adviser thinks that the words are good or bad is still to be questioned. I am also helping a new graduate student who is at IU. I wish I was there or he was here because so many of the things he's doing is so much easier to do with someone to just go walk to and ask. Jason and I had that for all stages of our analysis and so I wish he had that. Ah well, I'm doing my best via e-mail.

My dad and I are going to go play tennis here in a bit as soon as the courts dry and the man wakes up from his little cat nap. Until then I'm going to keep plugging away at the thesis.

Happy Thursday.

What's New

Wow, when you get out of the habit of writing everyday it gets hard to think of what you want to say.

So yeah, things here are pretty good. My dad and I went to the Cubs game last Thursday which was just about the most exciting games I have ever seen. Over the weekend we had a wedding shower for my cousin...moved my dad into his swanky new place on Sheridan and Addison on Sunday and for the rest of the time we just relaxed. My Dad's place is right across the street from the lakefront path which is awesome. We went running Sunday and Monday...oh yeah and on Saturday too..wow....three days in a row. Go figure.

Yesterday I went to my Dad's in the morning and we noticed that the tennis courts by the totem pole are empty during the week in the mornings....my dad and I tried to play tennis once when I was a kid and I ended up throwing the brand new racket that he had given me at his head because I got so frustrated. That is the one and only time that I have ever played. But I figured it might be fun to try again, so we bought some tennis balls and Jason has some racquets that we can use. That is on the table for tomorrow morning or Thursday morning.

I guess that's about it. I heard back from the company I interviewed with and they said that they were excited that I was interested and that I'll hear from them soon with next steps. I am excited to see what happens with that.

Alright, well that's all from here. Seems that the dark cloud is lifting.