Some Sundays are pretty perfect.

I have no complaints about today.  I have few complaints in general, really, but today is pretty fantastic so far.  I had something like 20 people over last night for homemade deep dish pizza, and it was so fun.  I hope everyone else had a good time, because I had a really good time.  I love cooking for people, and I have the greatest friends in the world, and the pizza was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.  The funniest part was probably that almost everyone who came brought a six-pack of beer, so the entire bottom half of our fridge was full of beer, but we worked our way through most of it over the course of about 6 hours.  And 5 pizzas!  5 of 'em!  Grad students are a hungry, beer-guzzling people, it turns out.  I was also really pleased that the dogs were overall quite well behaved.  A lot of the people here were dog people, so they seemed comfortable with them and were good about petting and patting them when they deserved it and telling them to get their noses away from the food when they deserved that, and the dogs were so happy to have so many people here.  I think a good time was had by all.

So despite all the revelry, I was really good about drinking lots of water, and I woke up feeling weirdly good this morning.  I did about 6.5 miles up in the hills yesterday, and we're playing frisbee this afternoon, so I didn't want to overdo it, but I felt better than I expected to, and I did a good, quick little 5.5 miles with the dogs this morning.  It is a gorgeous day out.  The sun is shining and there's a nice, cool breeze, and it's somehow beautifully warm and cool at the same time.

Now I'm home and I made myself some coffee and pancakes and I put on some new music I treated myself to - the weekend before last, after frisbee, one of my friends invited me to an impromptu concert thing in San Francisco.  And despite the fact that it was Sunday night I had plenty of things to do, I went anyway, and I was so glad I did.  So anyway, I bought the EP by the girl we saw, and it's really nice Sunday morning pancake music.  I don't think she was intending that, but it works.

I'm starting to get really pumped for Napa Valley.  This is almost certainly premature, because it's in a little over 5 months, but I'm starting to get really excited about marathon training again.  I didn't know if that would ever happen again, because after each marathon, I've been ready for a mental break from running for a while.  I love it, but those 4 hour runs really cut into your life.  The thing about a 4 hour run is that it's a whole mental journey.  The physical exhaustion only really kicks in for the last 2-3 miles or so.  It's making yourself head out the door when you know you're going to be gone for 4 hours, and making yourself keep going when you get kind of bored and tired of running, that's the hard part.  And after you've broken through the mental barrier of knowing perfectly well that you are capable of running 26.2 miles, you don't even really get the mental charge that comes from the accomplishment itself anymore.  It almost becomes a bit of a chore: "Aw man, I'm supposed to do another 20 miler this weekend," like "Aw man, I really need to tackle that pile of laundry."

Anyway, now that it's been over a year since my last marathon, I'm totally ready and anxious to do another one.  It's been a long time since I ran 20 miles, long enough that I miss it.  There's something so meditative about settling into a pace and just holding it for several hours.  Your mind drifts all over the place, and then you get to the end and it almost feels like waking up from some weird dream.  Running that far is definitely a completely different experience, physically and mentally, from normal everyday runs.  And I have to be in a certain mental space to actively want to do that, and I am suddenly feeling like I'm in that mental space again.

I think it must have to do with how busy I am this semester.  It's my whole momentum phenomenon; now that I'm back to doing a lot of school work all the time, I'm just feeling generally more hard-core and like running 20 miles is probably a good idea.

Also, I really want to go run through Napa.  It's going to be so gorgeous, and the idea of running through the countryside early in the morning is just so appealing to me right now.

Running, running, running.  I didn't think this post was going to be about that.  I thought it was going to be about how I'm leaving for San Diego and Boston a week from today and I'm not ready for either of those conferences quite yet, but in a way this post is about the fact that I'm in a very good place, mentally, right now.  I have a lot to do, but I feel really good about it, for the most part, even though I could easily be freaking out if I let myself.  It's a good feeling to be at a place in my life where I can think about all the stuff I have to get done and just be ready to buckle down and do it without worrying about whether/how it will get done.  It will get done.  And I will do it.  But I'm not going to worry about it in the meantime.

And so some Sundays are pretty perfect.  You wake up without an alarm clock, take your dogs for a run through the Berkeley hills, fix yourself some coffee and pancakes, listen to some lovely piano music, and then you plan the rest of your week before you head out for some frisbee with your friends. I can't really think of a much better day than that.

Ok, I get it, dog, you're a coonhound!

Oh my god.  I'm awake at 1:31 a.m. because Roger let the dogs out to pee and Rye massacred a possum in the backyard.  And I guess after he shook the crap out of it, Roger told him to drop it, and he did right away, because he would apparently make an amazing hunting dog if we would actually take him hunting.  So the possum made its way into the corner of our yard, behind the shed and under a bunch of logs and crap, and Rye cornered it and barked.  And barked.  And barked.  And barked.  And barked.  At which point I woke up and realized something must be very wrong, because he was barking his friggin' head off in the backyard, enough to wake me up inside the house.  So I threw on some shoes and ran outside, and there's Rye, standing his ground behind the shed and barking his head off because hey!  He treed that possum, by golly, and there was no way in hell he was gonna let it get away.

We ran inside and got a leash, and some treats, and Roger had his flashlight, and I was able to hook a leash on his collar and drag him out from behind the shed.  He was actually very, very good.  He wanted to make sure everyone in the East Bay knew that that possum was TREED and he did it, but when I told him to come to me, he did, albeit very reluctantly.  Then we got him inside and Roger was finally able to tell me what the hell was going on (because at that point, all I knew was that I had just been woken up by Rye barking a lot, and there was apparently something hiding behind the shed), and we could see that the little guy had a little bitty spot of blood on the side of his snout.  So we swabbed it with some iodine and gave him lots of treats and told him what a good hound dog he was and put him in his crate to help him settle down.  He actually was really, surprisingly good, all things considered, just visibly preoccupied by the one thought he can successfully hold in his little coonhound brain: there is an animal in my yard that I cannot let escape.

So now he's asleep, but we called the emergency vet to make sure we were safe on rabies.  Apparently the only animals in the Bay Area that ever carry rabies are bats (good to know!) and especially since Rye just had his rabies booster last month, he should be totally and completely fine even if the thing did have rabies, since he apparently didn't get bit (he just attacked and shook the crap out of the thing) and his vaccine would have protected him anyway.

Holy moly.  How am I ever going to get back to sleep?

It's funny, though; I had just been thinking this past week about how I might want to rename my blog.  I mean, really, they're not actually the only coonhounds in Berkeley.  That was just a commentary on the fact that not many people in the Bay Area move out here with coonhounds.  But I guess Rye ain't havin' none of that.

Addiction

Today was the first day I went running this week. I couldn't believe how strong I felt... like I could run - fast - for hours. I've been working a lot this week, and it's actually felt really great. I finally got clearance for my research (barely in the nick of time, since we have to present our qualifying paper research to the whole department on Monday...) so I've been at the preschool every day this week, running my speech perception experiment with little kids. They are so gosh darned cute. Some of them are so focused on the task and they try really really really hard to do a good job. Some of them couldn't care less and they just want to jabber and jabber. This one little girl told me, "I have a cat! She's like a grandma cat! Except she didn't have any babies." I took that to mean her cat was old. And then I tried to get her to listen to some more sounds. :)

Anyway, running. So I've been leaving the house around 8:00 this week, and getting home around 6:30 or 7:00, and that's a lot of working for me. (I have to say "for me", because of course Roger works way more than that, so it's all relative.) I can normally do at least some of my reading at home, so it feels less like work, but this week being out and about all day, and running back and forth between the preschool and my classes, and trying to keep 4-year-olds on task for several hours at a time has been exhausting and exhilarating all at once. It's been really fun, and I'm kind of looking forward to my presentation on Monday (after I put a few more hours' work into it). But running, running... I just haven't been getting up early enough to do it. I think it's great timing though, because I just realized today that it's only been a month since my marathon, so I should still be taking it somewhat easy anyway. The training rule of thumb is to take it easy for about as many days as miles in your last race - so for a 26.2 mile race, you should take it easy for about 26 days afterward. I think I took 4 days completely off after my race, and then I started going for easy runs again, and I felt totally fine, but I dunno, maybe a little tired. I think I had a little less spring in my step, but it was only really noticeable on the hills.

So today I headed up into the hills for a good, solid 7 mile run, at a good little clip, with my sweet dogs in tow. Poor guys have been home alone a lot this week, and only getting one decent walk a day, when I get home in the evening. They were so happy to be out running today. Just smiling and tilting their heads back like they were riding in a car with their heads out the window. I hadn't done a good Berkeley hills run in a while, so we went way up into the hills, around this gorgeous, wooded park with trails and trees and a creek. It rained last night, but the sun was coming out this morning, and Northern California in the winter is so green and lush, so the sun was streaming through the trees and the little rain drops falling off of the leaves were catching little glints of light and just sparkling as they fell to the ground. It was gorgeous, and so peaceful, and I just felt so good. Then we came downhill a little bit and went by Indian Rock Park, this big boulder with a little park area around it, and the view of the Bay literally stopped me in my tracks. I stopped, and stood, and looked, and breathed in the cold fall air, and I almost started crying, to tell you the truth. Here's an idea of what it looked like, poached from Google images:

As I stood there, perfectly still with nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the breeze rustling the leaves, I realized my whole body was just buzzing. I have no other way of describing it... I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and felt this strange, zen, buzzing calmness. I was so completely in the moment, and all I could feel was the chilly air and this very low key humming sensation just emanating from inside me. I know this sounds completely weird, but it was just... warmth, and light, and peace, and calmness, and like nothing else in the whole world mattered except that moment. I just looked down at the Bay, and looked at my dogs looking down at the Bay, like they too could stand there peacefully forever, and I was overwhelmed with the wonderfulness of being alive.

When I took off again, I realized that the buzzing sensation had to be my body's response to not running for a week and then suddenly getting hit with the endorphins of going for a long-ish, hard-ish run. I've talked before about how I feel sluggish if I don't run for a few days in a row, but if it goes longer than a few days, the sluggishness mostly goes away and I feel pretty normal. So from this strange slightly otherworldly experience, I think I must conclude that I am physically addicted to running. I've noticed it before, but today I think was the most extreme instantiation of it. I think I trained hard enough for long enough that I got really used to having that regular rush of endorphins, and then I suddenly took long enough off that I had minor withdrawal (in the form of sluggishness) for a few days before I readjusted, and then bounding up into the hills today must have made the normal endorphin rush much more potent than usual. Jeez, who needs drugs when you can go running?

Okay, it is noon and I need to take a shower and go by the grocery store and make some food for a pre-Thanksgiving potluck tonight. And I should probably crunch some numbers and work on my presentation for Monday. So that's all for now, but I'll do my best to write again soon, even though the semester is going to be somewhat insane from here on out...

The Banshee of Live Oak Park (y otros cuentos)

Wow, have I got a story for you. And then I'll tell you how my summer is going.

On Sunday, I was running with the dogs, as per usual, and I decided to go through this beautiful little park in North Berkeley. It's called Live Oak Park, and it's up in the Berkeley Hills, full of very tall trees and cute little paths and a babbling brook. It's very nice, and I hardly ever run through it, because it's a bit of a trek to get up there. I guess to set this up properly, I should also mention that North Berkeley/the hills is where all the rich people live, and it's generally an extremely safe area. It's kind of like southwest Champaign, or Sandy Ridge in Mahomet or something. Very bourgie.

Anyway, I'm running through this lovely little park with the dogs, admiring the trees with the sunlight streaming through them, thinking about what a nice, crisp, clear morning it is, when I am ruthlessly snapped out of my reverie by the most god-awful bloodcurdling scream/cackle I have ever heard. To my right, directly next to me on the ground is this woman who decided it would be nice to hide amongst the brush and literally shriek at me as I passed her. Well. More precisely, I had come to this part of the path that narrowed, and I suddenly found myself stuck between a huge tree and an insane screaming woman sitting 3 or 4 feet to my right at the foot of a small hill. The thing about it was, the path was really narrow, and the dogs were right in front of me and were totally freaked out too. So they stopped to check her out, and I couldn't push them ahead or turn around and pull them behind me, because we were bottlenecked in this little piece of path between the tree and the foot of the hill.

Let me tell you, I honestly do not remember the last time I was so frightened. Running along, la la la, what a nice day, blood curdling scream. Freeze. Realize I'm cornered by a crazy person. And then, in between cackles, as I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do, she looks right at me and says, "I'M A BIG GIRL NOW! A BIIIIIIIIG GIRRRRRL NOW! AHH HA HA HAHA! THE JOKE'S ON YOU!"

Did I mention how terrifying this was? Never before in my life have I been in such proximity to someone who is quite literally a raving lunatic. The scariest part was her eyes - they were this milky, translucent color, and just burning with insanity, there is no other way I can think of to describe it. She was very clearly not on this planet, mentally. I don't know if she was schizophrenic or what, but this is the kind of person in the kind of state where... well, I could imagine something terrible happening. I honestly was somewhat expecting her to punctuate her "the joke's on you" by lunging at me or something.

And Huck. Huck is trying to give the insane woman a kiss. If there were any doubts about whether that dog loves everyone and everything, let them be assuaged.

So after a few seconds of panic that seemed like an eternity, I pushed passed the dogs and started running again. Once I got a hold of myself, that's all I could do, is take off and run run run away. I was completely shaken up for a good half hour after that... adrenaline pumping, replaying the scene in my head, being so glad that nothing bad happened. Another thing that was so terrifying about it is that it came out of nowhere. I would have been somewhat more mentally prepared for it if we hadn't been in the nicest part of Berkeley. Like, you can kind of be on guard for crazy bums when you're downtown, and you can see them coming from further away when you're more on guard and not enjoying the peace and quiet of running through a lovely little patch of trees.

Man. I don't think I'll ever run through that park again now. Quite a shame, because it's so darn pretty.

So that was my Sunday. Monday was the start of my Spanish class! Yay Spanish! It really is like a full time job... I have to remind myself that this is what I signed up for, and it is going to be so good for me. Already, my comprehension has gotten pretty decent... I can parse words really well, and I'm picking up all the little grammatical turns of phrase that let you put together real sentences. Things like "because" and "the thing that..." and "if you want to..." and all the little pieces that make the difference between "me Tarzan, you Jane" and "Hello, my name is Tarzan, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Jane." Not that I'm anywhere near that suave yet. But I can understand other people when they're that suave, and that's the first step. I'm still stuck saying things like, "My name is Melinda. I am 25 years old. I have two dogs. I like my husband very much. He has a head that is shaved. How nice!" But whatever, it'll come.

Speaking of husbands and dogs, they're all doing great, by the way. Roger's still getting home pretty late, but he came home so happy and excited last night; he had had a really fantastic meeting with the CEO of his company who had only glowing things to say about him, and I know it was a real morale booster. So even though he's still working a lot, it's going really well, and he seems pretty happy most of the time (when he's not completely exhausted).

Rye pulled a bag of hamburger buns down off the counter while I was in the shower this morning, somehow managed to open the bag without damaging it at all, and was madly trying to choke down the last one when I discovered him. So basically the dogs haven't changed. Huck tries to kiss everything that moves, and Rye finds really weird stuff to chow down on when he gets bored enough.

La vida es asi, mis amigos! Time to brave these 58 degrees temps and walk those perros. Mil besos a vos y hasta pronto!

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!

Only one more week of long days left,

and then they start streaming by like water through a sieve again. This has been a wonderful break. My first semester of school went by so quickly, reminding me again of the fickle nature of Time; when you're waiting for something that's a few weeks or months away (as I was before moving and starting grad school), time passes so slowly. But when you're stuck in the moment (as I generally am when I have coursework to think about), time can easily pass you by. I can't believe we've been here for five months already!

I was ready for a break, though. I had a very busy semester, and while I've gotten a lot better about not stressing out when I have an interminable list of things to do, you can only keep it up for so long. So I was very relieved when it was time for a break, and I've been having a lovely time doing absolutely nothing. The great thing about a semester break, though, is that it's usually long enough that I'm ready to go back to school by the end of it. Like, ok, that was nice, but I'm ready to feel productive again...

So I'm starting to feel that way now, and that's lucky for me, because I start class on Tuesday. Part of that feeling is undoubtedly due to the fact that Roger's working now (more on that in a bit), which leaves me with very long days of walking the dogs, reading, and running little errands when I feel like leaving the house.

The Bahamas was (were?) great! Jimmy didn't win the tournament or anything, but we both had a really good time, I think. He was very happy to see his friends, I had a good time meeting them all, and it was really nice being able to spend some time with him - in such a gorgeous setting, no less! I'll post some pictures soon, maybe later today, even.

Roger loves his job. He has so much to do, and he loves being so productive and taking on such an important role in his company. He's already accomplished so much, and he's only been there a week and a half! He's got the payroll and the pensions in order, he's been working on the budget and ordering supplies, and apparently his boss referred to him as the company's controller in an email, which further supports Roger's theory that he's already looking at a promotion in the (relatively) near future. He's gone a lot now, especially since the commute is 75 minutes one way, but that's only temporary; his main task starting in about March will be to find a new office for the company in downtown San Francisco, and once they get moved in (in July or August), his commute will only be 30-45 minutes. In the meantime, I think we're both okay with him being gone a lot. And I don't mean that in the mean way it sounds! I'm starting class soon, he's thrilled to have stuff to do and really enjoying working, he's really fun to be around when he's home because he's in a great mood, and now that we'll have money, we can actually do stuff on the weekends, and I'll be able to do stuff with my friends during the week. He really likes his coworkers, too - one guy is actually from Downs, IL, which is pretty crazy, if you think about it, and there are a few other guys he seems to be getting along with well, too. They've been out to lunch a few times already, and I think once we get our house more in order, we can invite them over here.

Payday is Friday, and we've been conferring on what we should buy first. The first order of business will be repairing our fence. Yesterday morning, I let the dogs outside and made my coffee. I was going to drink it out on the deck because the weather has been fantastic the past few days, but it was eerily quiet when I walked outside. Well, to my horror, I soon realized the gate to our fence had finally given way, and the dogs were nowhere to be found. Freaking out, I set down my coffee and went running down the sidewalk in my pajamas and sock feet, whistling and yelling at the top of my lungs. When I quit screaming my head off for a second, I realized I could hear them barking and wreaking havoc just one street over, so I whistled and yelled louder, and pretty soon the two rascals go streaking down the sidewalk across the street. I yell "HEY!!!" so loud that they actually stop and look at me, followed by a very "wow, she really means it" rendition of "GET OVER HERE". So they come running back across the street right up to me with these elated looks on their faces of "man, that was AWESOME". I was so angry and relieved at the same time, but of course all I could hope for them to understand was that they were good dogs for coming home when I called them, so I loved on them a lot and gave them lots of treats for coming home.

But holy cow, that was freaking scary. So since payday is Friday, as I mentioned before, the first order of business is to have the fence completely repaired and improved so that that never happens again and we can put them back there confidently, knowing there will be no impromptu jaunts around the neighborhood. Hmm. I hope they didn't like, kill any cats while they were out. I hadn't thought of that until now.

So I emailed the landlords today to see if they'll be willing to help pay for it, and I've been looking around online for contractors to do the work. I found this place that specializes in deck repair, and there were some gorgeous before-and-after shots of decks, and that got me thinking - if we're paying to have the fence repaired, and we're hoping to start cleaning up the property anyway, maybe we should take the opportunity to have them stain the fence and deck while they're at it? Just an idea, but it would go a long way toward making the backyard look nice, which is the eventual goal.

We've been talking about other stuff to take care of, too, of course. I think we're going to swap our bedroom and the extra bedroom and finally get a desk for Roger so he doesn't have to sit at an ironing board in the living room, although it does kind of make me laugh. (You do whatcha gotta do, y'know?) Also, that reminds me: Roger's company gave him a "new, kick-ass laptop" on his first day, which is obviously great, and apparently they're getting rid of their old laptops, so I might get one of those for really cheap, which would be beyond excellent. I need a new one for this semester, so that's also near the top of the list of purchases.

I feel like I'm yammering on and on, but I guess that's sort of the point of a blog...

Anyway, we're both very very very excited and will be going out to dinner this weekend to celebrate the start of our real adult life, where we can like, actually do things. I couldn't be happier, and the year is certainly off to a wonderful start.

I'll try to post some pictures soon. Much love to all of you, and I hope your 2009 is off and running with a bang, too!