Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Wednesday Ramblings

Once again, the reason you all are hearing from me is because I have a ton of studying to do and have learned ways to distract myself from doing so. Apparently something is going well with the World Series...or the gangs of San Jose are rising up. Why not? Tonight is just a good a night as any for a gang uprising I suppose.

Anyway, so here's the news:

I have moved my office from the grad room to the lab on the 8th floor. Now that I spend a lot more time on campus trying to study, I have come to realize that other than the wee hours of the morning and the late hours of the night, the grad room can become very loud and distracting. I am not getting any studying done in there.

So here's my new desk.




It came complete with plenty of sunshine and half a bottle of Tennessee Whiskey. What a deal!

Also, the other morning I took these photos from the roof of the lab as the sun was coming up:






Oooh, aahhh.

Anyway, where was I?

So the lab is a nice quiet place to study. Not a whole lot of distractions. The only thing is that the nearest bathroom is two floors down a tower-like stairwell (no elevator). I guess it's good exercise.

There's also an issue with not being able to close the blinds (it's complicated) but I got two of them closed today, and they're actually adjustable. The other one that I'd really like to close is a bit more of a problem.

Computer programming is suddenly going ok, but actually no different than before. Sometimes my code works and I'm not sure why, and other times it doesn't work and I'm not sure why. Right now apparently my latest code works beautifully in a parallel universe, but I am not in that universe. I can't get it to run but my instructor can (and all you do is hit "run" strangely enough). She says it's beautiful. When I hit run I get an ugly red code that starts with "Warning!" and then some other gibberish I can't understand. That's a new error message to me. I should compile these error messages and make a little booklet. Terms of endearment as said by my computer. Like a couple weeks ago when it was lining out its expectations of me. Complete and utter baloney.

So somewhere out there, my computer code works which I suppose is a good thing.

Last night I went to bed, unable to get my code to work (in case you're wondering, computer code is all the things behind the scenes that our computers do in order to make all this stuff we want to see work) and had crazy frustrating dreams about trying different codes. I woke up around midnight with a couple ideas of how to make the code work. I got up and jotted them down, then went pee. This is where bad went to worse.

My eyeballs felt sticky. I realized I had forgotten to take my contacts out. I guess in my attempt to grab the contact case, I somehow knocked it into the toilet...that I had not flushed. I had to fish it out. Thankfully I was with it enough to remember exactly where another case was and tossed out the other one. I don't remember whether or not I washed my hands.

So tomorrow I have to figure out what is up with (or not up with) my code, take a quiz, go to a few classes, and study for next weeks Calculus and Physics exams. It's almost Friday. I can make it.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The Storm With No Name

Now that I am good and liquored up, I feel ok to talk about my day with you. It's been a little rough. But I have noticed that lowering my expectations helps a little with having days. We all have days. Lower your expectations of said day, and it actually turns out ok.

Today was the midterm for my computer programming for atmospheric sciences, or whatever the hell it's called. I actually do not know what the class is called except METR50. I was actually pretty excited to take this class and to learn computer programming. In general I am excited to become smart. Smart is cool, smart is fun. You draw weird squiggly lines and Greek letters on paper with or without numbers, you "write code" on a computer. You know what a derivative and an integral are. I mean, how cool, right?

Enter METR50 to put me in my place.

I'm no longer a fan of METR50 (computer programming). I still would love to be a great computer programmer. Write my own programs, debug existing programs, yadda yadda. Just not by way of this class. This class blows. Whether or not that phrase sounds intelligent, it is, alas, true.

I had no great expectations for today's midterm. As a matter of fact, I just assumed the entire class would fail it and we'd have some spectacular grading curve that landed me with a C. Awesome. I didn't even know how to study for this thing. We would have a written part, worth 60% of the grade that would be much like our quizzes that everyone keeps failing (including me) and then a programming part worth 40% where we would write code (computer code, in computer language, to make the computer do stuff)...which everyone has been doing semi-ok at, given that we're given a lab with a task and not taught how to do it...and then we're staring down a cursor on a black computer screen that only replies in sarcastic tone, saying things like "Syntax error" or "Float encountered when integer was expected".

Excuse me for a minute here. But who is the computer to "expect" anything? That damn thing can't anticipate my needs! It can't read my mind! If it could, this class wouldn't be the lowest grade this semester. I don't give a damn what you were expecting, if I give you a damn float, I expect you to take it and say thank you ma'am!

For crying out loud. Who does this computer think he is? You'll take what I give you and you will like it.

What does this have to do with a storm? I'll get there. There was damage in my apartment. Today.

Anyway, so I anticipated doing poorly on the written part of this test but figured I could pull it together in the actual programming portion.

And of course the written part stunk. What will the following code produce? Blah blah blah.....? What? How the hell should I know? I don't speak Python!! Ugh, anyway, totally expected. Let it go. On to the programming portion.

I did well for the first part. Now that I've had a full bottle of sake I have no recollection of what the first part was, but whatever.

The second part though. The second part was a nightmare. It was open book for the programming part, as well as open note, and open internet. But really, when asked to write a program that will calculate the atmospheric pressure at a certain altitude given a surface pressure, and then have that program print out a table (neat, in line table) of your altitude versus your pressure... I just don't even know where to start in asking Google or Jeeves or Yahoo or whoever the hell might be willing to help me on my midterm.

I typed in the function and confirmed it would give me an output. Check.

Now I had to get that function to loop through over 50 different altitudes without me typing in those altitudes, and give me an atmospheric pressure for each of those altitudes in a neat table.

What did it give me?

"Syntax error"

"Float encountered, integer expected"

Like I said, I don't care what the hell you expected, I gave you a float and I expect you to work with a float. Damnitt. 

"5000 data-blogger-escaped-1x089045ksjdfn.="" data-blogger-escaped-at="" data-blogger-escaped-function="" data-blogger-escaped-p="" data-blogger-escaped-pressure="  What? Really?

I looked at the clock. I had 2 more hours to figure this last problem out. But time wasn't the problem. The problem was I had no idea how to tackle this. I scanned my notes. I flipped half heartedly through the stack of books at my desk. I had to pee. Bad. Should I give up? No way. I can figure this out in 2 hours.

I asked for permission to leave to pee. Granted. I came back with slightly (ok, not really) more hope.

People around me sighed in frustration. The girl a few seats over dropped her head onto her desk. I had had several cookies and brownies and a few gulps of coffee before this exam. I tried a few more things. I tried a FOR loop and a WHILE loop. I tried for n in range (0,5100, 100). I tried return this and return that. In return I got:

5000 [834832.,m 9030u53ioj5 opiu390u5iojf vpwiuiowjflm e u3msv kjkioewutu qwpu903259 -93589-  858 835-98-885-   8 85858- -85-8 85-8358-358   85-24=09-68 ]
..........or something very similar.

I got error after error. I was collapsing. I buried my face in my hands. My eyes filled with tears. Yes. I am a grown woman and an exam was bringing me to tears. Literally.

I pulled another book out and flipped absentmindedly through the pages. I tried different things I came across.

Suddenly.....it worked!!!! I had a table with altitude and corresponding pressures!!!

I spruced it up a bit, gave it a heading, made sure they were spaced evenly, made sure the units were attached to the output, sent my program in to the instructor, had her check to be sure she got it, gathered my things and skipped off to the grad room.

Everyone asked how it went. One girl told me the final for that class brought her to tears. No joke!! That midterm brought me to tears. I ate several more cookies. I think I ate maybe 8 sugar cookies with super sweet frosting over a several hour period. They were so good. I didn't have alcohol so the sugar was going to have to do it. Just a few more things to button down before I could go hit the grocery store, then go home to make enchiladas and Mexican rice.

The wind was howling and the sky was dark. A storm was brewing. (Really, just the tail end of a front was about to hit us, so we were getting its outflow gusts of wind).

When I finally got home (accidents on the freeway, groceries, etc), I saw that everything on my kitchen windowsill had been knocked over, and one of the terrarium thingys had been shattered. The bonsai tree was tipped on its side and there was no sign of Mr. Spud. Ugh. Really? And no alcohol on board (or anything other than cookies). Ok, no big deal, I can handle this.



I cleaned up the glass, soil, rocks, plants, etc. I just threw out the plants. It occurred to me that I could just replant them somewhere but I had no "where" to plant them. I was not up to going back out and buying pots.

(The windowsill, once covered by knick-knacks and plants, had been swept clean when a strong gust of wind had pushed the blinds into everything, toppling everything in its path.)

I found Mr. Spud in the sink and brushed him off and put him aside. I brought out the vacuum cleaner so that I wouldn't have to brush up against any glass. Dishes, the counters, Mr. Spud, everything, got a good vacuuming to ensure I would not later come in to contact with glass.

Oh Mr. Spud. If only I had paid more attention. If only I had thought of your wellbeing instead of getting the crap cleaned up and the groceries put away.

As I vacuumed over Mr. Spud, removing soil and small glass remnants, I heard the vacuum cleaner suck up something larger. I took a good look at Mr. Spud and gasped. Oh my god his eyes!!!!






Oh it just sickens me. I thought about going through the contents of the vacuum cleaner, but I was well beyond my means...actually....the contents are still there. So when I sober up in the morning I can pick through the vacuum cleaner and find his eyes.

So Mr. Spud is a potato and vegetable scrubber. He has a brush on his back. He grins at me and makes googley eyes as I wash dishes or cook. Well. Not currently. Now Mr. Spud sits and grins blindly out at the world.

So I poured sake into a shot glass as I cooked. A bottle of sake, 3 enchiladas and two helpings of Mexican rice later, I am fairly content.

My bonsai might live. Maybe I'll search for Mr. Spud's eyes tomorrow. The succulents are dead. The vintage salt and pepper shakers are fine. The wind has settled and there is no sign of rain at the moment. But maybe tonight.

I'm still over an hour away from bedtime and too intoxicated to finish writing up my physics lab report, or calculate the molecular weight of air on Venus, so maybe I'll just peruse Pinterest.


Moral of the story? Simply lower your expectations, eat lots of sugar and drink plenty of coffee, eat good food and wash it down with alcohol. It'll all be ok in the morning.

Oh, and Queso Anejo is just simply amazing.

Monday, October 13, 2014

One more!

Found this one this morning...and it's local. Kind of.


Moo-nlight half marathon in Davis. The cow glows in the dark. It's a night run. During the summer.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Just for the medals.....

The other day I was thinking about how I was going to retire from running marathons after I qualify for, and then run, the New York City Marathon. Marathon training can be ridiculous some times. I mean, who does this? I actually know plenty of people who do. As a matter of fact, one of my friends just ran a 50 mile race (I think she won?) and then two weeks later ran the Chicago Marathon (just today).

I used to dream of doing the Canadian Death Race. I've let that go for now. It's a 125km (77.67 mile) race over several summits. I was enticed because of the lore. It has a theme based on Greek or Roman Mythology, I don't remember which. Anyhow, you're given a coin at the start of the race in which you are to pay the ferryman at a river crossing to get you across. If you lose the coin (at least back in the day when I first saw this) the ferryman will take you across but you're disqualified and will be escorted to the finish. So the mythology follows that of having to pay the ferryman of the dead to get you across the river Styx. That's why they put coins on peoples eyelids when they died. If they did not have the coins, they were forever doomed to walk the river bank....which is purgatory. So you give the man your coin and continue on your way. After finishing (the limit is 24 hrs I think) you're awarded with this cool coin...you might have to buy the plaque part.




Super cool.

Anyway, so I was just thinking about cool marathon medals (mine came crashing down last night after hanging them on one of those non-damaging wall hook things that didn't have a weight rating on it). My Boston medal is my proudest at this moment in time, but when I get a NYC one, that one will take its place, mostly due to the much harder work I'm going to have to go through to qualify and get a spot.

But there are such cool medals out there to be had!! And thankfully not all of them are full marathons, so that helps. But it does require some travel which makes it all a little more difficult. So I think after NYC, I'm just going to pick out the races with the coolest bling and go run them. Here we go, in no particular order, the races I want to run just for the cool medals.

Bird in Hand Half Marathon
Amish Country, Pennsylvania.



The Amish use old horse shoes, paint them all nice (or not I guess, depending on the year maybe?) and make a medal of it. Then they hand them to you at the finish line.

Also of note, Amish people are handing out water at aid stations.

I think this medal is super cool because it's hand made.







Richmond Marathon
Richmond, (Virginia I suppose)








Because I think it's pretty.











The Cowtown
Ft. Worth, Texas

Now here is something interesting that I just noticed. This is 5 different medals. I saw another cool one like this that was two medals. The problem with that is to get this whole design, I would have to run a half marathon in Texas 5 times. I'm not a big fan of Texas. Soooo.... I don't know about this one.













Rock and Roll Virginia Beach
Virginia Beach...Virginia I assume? I'm terrible at geography.




Ooooh. Look how pretty!!! I mean, just look at it! And it's only a half!














Rev3 Triathlon
Somewhere in Maine







You gotta admit, they're pretty cool.















A1A Half Marathon
Ft. Lauderdale, FL




Dude. Super sweet. That thing opens and closes I think. I also believe they were voted one of the best medals out there.

This is the A1A medal for a different year. Also pretty cool.



Gasparilla Half Marathon
Tampa, FL



My personal favorite. Coolest race medal ever. This one is a must-do. Who wouldn't run a half marathon to get that bad boy?










Spooktacular Half Marathon
San Dimas, CA







I'm a big fan of Day of the Dead stuff. One day I would like to go to Mexico and observe the celebration. So I think this medal is really cool.














Running for the Bay Marathon
Apalachicola, FL


 Again, another pretty medal. Although I have to say I'm a little skeptical about running in Florida. I've been to Florida. In the Winter/Spring. I wouldn't run in it. So I don't know. But at least the Gasparilla one. Totally worth 13.1 miles of misery. I'm not sure this one is worth 26.2 miles of misery.












Wineglass Marathon
Finger Lakes, NY


The finishers "medals" are made of glass. Maybe from bottles, I don't know. Also, there is a wine party post race. You can also do a half marathon.








There's all sorts of boring medals out there. I own a few. But I'm still proud of them and all the hard work and suffering that went into each and every one of them. Each one comes with its own story. Some of them funnier than others.

So if any of these interest you.....Debbie.....Jen..... anyone else....hit me up. We'll plan it.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

My Own Worst Enemy

Sometimes I get really great ideas. These ideas usually undo any great things I've done for myself. I hurdle my own roadblocks with the speed and grace of an olympian.

I don't keep sugar in the house. Or junk food. The only chocolate in the house is baking cocoa. For sweeteners I have honey, pure maple syrup and agave nectar. No cake, ice cream or brownies. If I want sweets, I have to go out and get them. And that requires effort. So really I don't eat sweets all that much. Except on Tuesdays when Kelly brings homemade treats in for all the grad students. This week it was homemade peanut butter cup things about the size of a small cheeseburger. They were in tiny pie tins, with a crust, peanut butter, melted chocolate, whip cream and crumbled peanut butter cups on top. Just sinful.

Oh yeah, and one of the professors also brought in two cakes (one chocolate and one carrot cake) because they had a potluck birthday party for his friend and 9 people brought cake. So I may have had one giant piece of chocolate cake. And then later in the week a small piece of carrot cake. I don't really like carrot cake but I had this really nasty taste in my mouth from a Cold Ease lozenge (to ease my cold) and had to get rid of it somehow.

And then maybe some pop tarts yesterday.

But really, I try to stay away from sweets. Maybe I should keep a journal of my junk intake. I might be surprised.

I'm getting over a cold. And today I traded my cold for cramps. Aaarrghh!!!!

I took the trash out and on the way up the stairs, they struck. Wooooo!!!! Breathe. Breathe. Wooooooo.

I made it back inside where I doubled over for a minute until they subsided. Then went to go prep a meatloaf.

Woooooo!!! Breathe, breathe, woooooo. I doubled over again as the pain sent a flush of warmth through my body.

If it is not one thing, it's another.

I breathed it away.

I got the meatloaf in the oven and opened the fridge. A bunch of lonely celery sat on the bottom shelf. Hmm. What can I do with celery? I decided to pair it with the all natural cashew butter on the second shelf. It was a little stiff. How can I soften this?

Ooh! Maybe add some honey, heat it up a little...maybe a dash of cinnamon?

Wait......hang on. Maybe some cocoa powder? And a little agave? Would that be like Nutella? Nutella is bad for you by the way, contrary to popular belief. So you should not sit there and eat it with a spoon. Everything in moderation.

So I mixed up the cashew butter, a little agave, some cocoa powder and a little soy milk to make it creamy. Then I dipped the celery in it.

The celery was like blasphemy. So I finished the celery and tried the chocolate cashew butter with a spoon. Much better. After a few spoonfuls, I got this image in my head, which I found on Pinterest:


Fortunately after a few days off, I'm back to running tomorrow. Meanwhile, the remainder sits in my fridge for emergencies.

When Great Trees Fall

When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly.  Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed.  They existed.
We can be.  Be and be
better.  For they existed.
****************************************

Christa showed me that poem when Dad died, someone had shown it to her. And I could never believe how incredibly well it described losing someone close to you. I made a copy for Corey and her mom and they felt the same way.

Today, because it's becoming fall, because the air is cool and clean in the morning, because we just said goodbye to Ron, because we spent a weekend talking about all of our dads we had lost, I feel that light, sterile air. I feel the first couple weeks after Dad died when everything had a subdued silence and I longed for something to comfort me.

I made chicken and rice soup to help with a cold and considered going for a run. But the cool air made me want to hunker down and remember how to breathe. I feel the need for something I don't remember, a past comfort that's always brought on by the fall and I can never quite put my finger on it. I bought a couple scented candles and a couple plants to try to find whatever it was. There's something familiar here in the morning fog and short days. Sterile I guess explains it as well as anything else. But it's so far into the past that I can never quite get a handle on it.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Fairy Trees


Mondays are overwhelming by themselves. I'm thrown back in to a world of incompetent drivers and tight schedules. Monday is my longest and toughest day. Calculus lecture, a short break, then a long frustrating physics lab, after which I race off to physics lecture- grabbing Pop Tarts out of the vending machine on my way. It's almost dark as I gather my belongings from the grad room and drive home.

But yesterday as I drove home from Corey's house, I thought about the fairy tree in Ireland that we saw on a tour. Legend has it, if you tie a white object to the tree, you may make a wish on someone else's behalf. I rummaged in my purse for something white and found a scrap of paper. A piece of my journal or a receipt perhaps. As I fixed it to a branch, I made a wish that Corey's dad would be ok. Because I knew the pain of losing a dad and felt that she had too good a heart for it to be broken that way.

But a wish is just wishful thinking, or maybe a strong wind blew my wish from the tree, or the fairies don't like tourists. In any case, we all gathered atop Mt. Pinos to say goodbye and pay our respects and wait for the reality to sink in.

It comes in waves and I let out a quick short sob as I rounded the corner a half hour from San Jose and got a glimpse of the purple and pink clouds of the sunset.

When I got home I had to pull myself together to finish my physics homework but was too tired to grasp friction forces and centripetal acceleration.

This morning my eyes are puffy but the day is full of responsibility and the world doesn't stop no matter how much you ask it to, and I think I was blessed that when it was my dad's time I had several months to pull myself together since I was laid off for the winter. The girls are all now back at work as they try to figure out their new normal.

I guess it's too much to ask- to not suffer, to not feel pain, to not be stripped completely raw by reality. Being in a room with a group of women- all of whom had lost their fathers, some more recently than others, put me in awe at the sharpness of grief as well as the bond that loss forms. We relate by pain. We see little pieces of ourselves in the scars of others. Maybe it's easier to share ourselves if we're already broken into little pieces- perfect sizes for handing out to others to take home.