Semester #2 Has Begun

I've been lazy with the blog lately. I started my second semester of school last week, and I'm not at all into a routine yet. I haven't figured out yet when to do my homework and readings, when to have down time, when to do house work, when to walk the dogs. Well. The last one is taking care of itself, actually; with Roger leaving around 6:45 in the morning, Rye has decided that's when he needs to get up, too. So every morning when Roger's about to leave, Rye gets up to say goodbye to him, and then he stands right next to me and barks his little head off until I get out of bed. Really not an ideal situation. He is such a stubborn little fart. So I usually get up a little before 7:00 and dilly dally for about 15 minutes before the sun comes up, and then the dogs and I get in a run so I don't feel too terribly bad about leaving them alone all day. Then I shower and go to class, and usually get home around 4:00, it seems. Today I went grocery shopping and did the dishes, tomorrow I'm taking Huck to the vet for a check up, Friday I'm meeting someone for a run in the afternoon, so that means I'll try to get the dogs to the dog park in the morning so I don't have dog mom guilt.

I think I like my classes this semester, but it's a bit early to tell. This semester is extremely different from the last one in terms of subject material; last semester was very "experiment" heavy, in that I was mostly reading research articles all the time. This semester seems like it will involve a lot more problem sets and less reading. In case anyone's interested, here's what I'm taking: phonology (where we learn about analyzing the sound systems of languages), quantitative methods in linguistics (where we learn lots of statistics and how to analyze data), historical linguistics (how languages can change over time), cognitive linguistics (how the brain stores language... supposedly... I'm skeptical about this class), and I'm sitting in on experimental phonetics, where we get to play with high tech lab equipment to do things like measure pitch and air flow while people are talking. I'm particularly excited about the last one, since I don't actually have to worry about doing the work for a grade - I just get to play!

Other developments in my life... my new running shoes came in today!! I'm going to go pick them up on Friday or Saturday and take them for a test run. I am so excited. I also seem to have found some potential running partners. Ok, here's a funny story. So I posted an ad to Craigslist looking for a marathon training partner. The first girl who emailed me back was talking about how she's working on her second bachelor's degree now and used to be a personal trainer. I'm thinking, all right, awesome. Somewhat serious about both school and running - my kind of chick, right? So we have this email exchange wherein it becomes clear to me that she honestly believes astronomy and astrology to be the same thing. It's not that she mixed up the words - that would be far more forgivable - no, she just started a second bachelor's in astronomy this semester because she thought it was astrology. Something along the lines of "I'm more interested in the spiritual aspects of astronomy, not all that physics and chemistry stuff." Yikes. Now, part of me says I should stop being so judgmental and give her another chance. But if I run with her once, it'll be harder to get rid of her in the future. And marathon training involves spending hours with someone. What am I, a person who clearly values science and science education very highly, going to have to talk about with someone who signed up for astronomy classes to like, predict what house is in Virgo this month or whatever?

Then girl #2 emails me, and she's from Orange County. First strike against her. She wants to train to run her first marathon with her dad and sister in May, and she's "starting from zero". Umm, you do know how long a marathon is, right? I would not recommend going from 0 to 26.2 in, uh, 12 weeks. The selfish part of me wants to try running with this girl anyway, but the concerned fellow runner part of me wants to forbid this girl from attempting this, since she's probably going to do some serious damage to her body if she actually goes through with it.

Anyway. I did find one person, this guy named Kevin who's originally from Michigan. I responded to his ad after being disappointed at my only two responses, and he's perfectly nice. He got a few other responses, too, so I might end up finding someone through the grapevine eventually.

I'm sorry if I bore everyone who reads this with my running talk.

I think we're going to join the City Car Share. The Bay Area has these cars (and trucks and vans) stationed all over the place, and when you sign up for this program, they send you a card that unlocks them. You go online and reserve one for whenever you want it, they send a signal to your card to allow it to unlock the car you signed up for, then record when you return the car, and you get charged $5/hour plus 40 cents/mile. Not bad at all. That way we can run errands more easily and maybe get out and explore a little bit, since it is very unclear whether there is a new car in our future any time soon. And lots of people apparently sign up for the car share while they wait to get a new car, and then end up so happy with the car share they forget about buying their own. Oh, the price includes all gas, maintenance, and insurance, and you can sign it out for 24 hours at a time at a flat rate of $40, if you want. The only drawback is we can't take the dogs in it... so we'll probably get a car eventually, but this will definitely do in the meantime.

I'm suddenly very tired of typing, so I'm going to get ready for bed now. I'll try to update again soon!