Don't tell the dogs!

But I'm going to be extremely selfish in a minute here and go for a run by myself. I know, I'm an awful dog mom, but I haven't been on a run by myself in (literally) months, and today just feels like a great day for it. I heard this song by Bon Iver again today (scroll down and click on the "Listen" link if you want to hear it), for the second time, and I have decided this is the next album I need to buy. But it put me in such a nice, melancholy little mood, and with the clouds rolling in on a chilly December afternoon, I just want to run around town by myself for a while. Campus will be deserted, the leaves are all still lovely, drooping, and yellow, and I'd like to have nothing else to think about except my own feet pounding the pavement.

In other news, I'm still enjoying having nothing to do, and I've taken the opportunity to read non-school things and watch movies so far. I've also been cooking and have decided I need to make a greater effort to eat healthy. It's easy to eat nothing but sweets around this time of year, and I've definitely hit the point where I feel kind of gross and don't want anymore. So I've been loading up on veggies and am trying to find interesting new things to do with them - if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

So after I finish this blog post, I'm going to hit the road for a while, then I'll shower and get dressed (in my new clothes!), then the one thing I want to get done today is to write a letter to Michelle. Are you reading this, Michelle? I am going to write you a long overdue letter today. I'm thinking about going to Barnes and Noble to do it, just to get out of the house for a while and have an excuse to treat myself to some yummy tea or a Frappuccino or something. Oh right. Eating healthy. Maybe I'll stick with the tea.

The other things I guess I should update you on are as follows:

- I checked my grades the other day and am very pleased with them. Hooray for a successful first semester of grad school! (Not that grades matter that much anymore, but it's always good to get positive feedback.)

- Since I got some money for Christmas, I went clothes shopping the other day and bought some much needed new jeans, as well as some corduroy pants that were on sale and a few cute tops.

- I am leaving for the Bahamas on Friday!!

Since I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, I hope this will suffice. I wrote it a few weeks ago. You can consider it a belated Christmas present, if you like. Here's to the end of a very interesting 2008!

* * * * *

Berkeley in November

is a failed watercolor

(the kind no one wants because the colors have all run together).

More than that: nothing even matches.

The earth is a parched and dirty brown,

but the trees have somehow regained their lush green

just in time to signal the transition to fall.

(Think of a broken traffic light

that switches on and immediately turns a garish yellow.)

And the sky! Who would think to swirl together such hues of

rose

burnt orange, dirty white

charcoal and cyan?

Frankly it’s all a bit too Thomas Kinkade for my tastes;

the houses glow with luminescent warmth,

the purplish hills come alive with twinkling lights

as the sun sets into the sea.

I just don’t buy it –

the real world is not rendered in such a palette.

Good news all around!

My mommy has informed me that this blog is in need of update, and she is right. I am just chock full of good news right now!

First and foremost: Roger has been hired at the job he interviewed for last week! (Hooray!!) We are both beyond excited and relieved, and he can't wait to start work. He starts January 5th and will be making the commute to Daly City every day, which maybe isn't ideal, but definitely tolerable; it's about 75 minutes one way, but that's actually pretty good for around here, I think. I guess the place also said there'll be an opportunity for telecommuting in the future, which means he may get to work from home sometimes.

Less excitingly, I'm done with my first semester of grad school! (Hooray!) I handed in my last paper on Monday night, then did absolutely nothing on Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, I went for a run on Wednesday, I think. Then on Thursday I started cleaning the house, and yesterday I already started to get bored and decided I would learn to work with the Natural Language Tool Kit over break. This involves learning some programming, but I've needed to do that for a while, so I think it's time to dive in.

Today I'm going to take the dogs for a run, eat some oatmeal, and grade my last set of papers. I might even do some laundry. Tomorrow I'm going to clean some more and I don't know what else, and Monday, my mommy will be here! The next few weeks should be really good, I think.

Happy, happy day

No, Roger doesn't have a job yet, but today, this is almost just as good: my wonderful husband fixed our furnace!!

The story is, our furnace didn't work when we first moved in, but we didn't care, obviously, because this is California. The guy who came to turn on our gas when we moved in said the valve in the furnace would need to be replaced, but we were in no rush, so I didn't worry about it. I thought we might even be able to make it through the winter without central heat. Well, suddenly in the past week or so, it has gotten a little on the cold side. Compared to how it has been, it actually feels cold, but I'm trying to keep a good Midwestern perspective on things. It still only gets down in the 40's overnight, and has been heating up to the mid-50's during the day. But since our house is pretty much the same temperature as it is outside, I just haven't been able to warm up. We've been trying to tough it out, though; we have a space heater, so I just put it on in the office while I do work, and it's fine... but it's just kind of... yucky and inconvenient.

Anyway, so I finally caved on Thursday and emailed our landlord to have him send someone to fix the furnace, and he talked to his wife about scheduling someone to come out next week. But the great news is that Roger was troubleshooting today and discovered that the wiring between the furnace and the thermostat wasn't hooked up properly. He re-wired it, and voila - wonderful, wonderful heat. We have returned to civilization!

So it is now an extremely cozy day. It's raining pretty steadily outside, and I'm huddled up in my office drinking tea and writing my last paper of the semester. Ahhhhh.

As long as I'm rambling on, I'll just add that the job outlook is still positive but uncertain. Roger said the two guys he interviewed with have been saying very promising things along the lines of "we'll be in touch next week about an offer for you", which clearly seems to suggest they're going to offer him the job, right? Otherwise it would just be like "we'll be in touch" or "thank you for your time" or something. Anyway, they're supposed to get back to him by Wednesday, so we are keeping all of our fingers and toes crossed.

And my Mommy is coming a week from today! I was mentally preparing an email along the lines of "Dear Mommy, make sure you bring extra clothes, because the overnight lows this week will be around 35..." but now we will all be warm and cozy together for Christmas. Yay!

Ok, back to writing my paper...

Another relatively boring morning update

I guess it turns out updating my blog in the morning is what I do when I haven't quite gotten up early enough to have time to motivate myself to do homework. ;) It's winding down, though! I think today, I need to write my two short response papers and start labeling words for my phonetics project. Tomorrow and Friday I need to study for my final and write my paper, Saturday is my final, and my last paper is due Monday. I'm gettin' there!

Roger's interview went "really well" yesterday. He said he seemed to have a good rapport with the two guys interviewing him (the CEO and the COO... Chief (something) Officer) and that he had lots of chances to show off what he knows. I'd hope so, it took almost two hours! They're supposed to let him know within a week whether he got it or not. I wish they'd just call, like, now and offer it to him. I can't wait 'til he starts working! I know I won't see him as much, but I know he'll feel so much better on so many levels, plus he just looks so handsome when he puts on a suit. :D

Let's see, what else... Mommy and Jimmy are coming for Christmas, and I'm so glad! I was worried she/they wouldn't be able to come, and that was making me sad, but they're both coming, so I'm very excited. Our new guest bed is supposed to get delivered tomorrow, and I bought us some brand new flannel sheets for our bed that are sooo cozy, so we can put our old sheets on the guest bed.

Huck really likes the new sheets. It's funny - the more time passes, the more Huck becomes a Melinda dog, and Rye's a Roger dog. Huck is such a little mama's boy these days. Sometimes it's really lame, but sometimes it's just heart-meltingly cute. Roger always makes fun of me because I like to go to bed early; I'm almost always in bed by 10:00, and I got up at 5:15 yesterday to do homework and did 5 miles with the dogs in the late afternoon, so I was ready for bed by 8:30. I was back here on my computer wasting time before I could (somewhat) respectably call it a day (let's face it - going to bed at 8:00 is pretty ridiculous), and when I went back to our room to get ready for bed, Huck was lying with his nose right up against the door looking SO SAD that he wasn't allowed to go to bed yet. Roger said he'd been lying there just whining very softly since like 7:30 and he couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. I knew. He wanted to go to bed! I know because I wanted to go to bed at 7:30 too, but I have human inhibitions and I couldn't let myself do that. Sure enough, as soon as he saw me, he was so relieved. I opened the door, he jumped up on the bed, and we cuddled up and went to sleep. I think it was 9:00 by that point, so I don't feel too pathetic.

Well, it's probably time to start my day. I'll let you know as soon as we find out about the job! Gros bisous à tous.

Grrrr...

This makes me a very unhappy camper. I was hoping for a kick-ass long run tomorrow, but running 10 miles would probably not be considered "limiting outdoor exertion". Pollution sucks. Maybe I'll hit the gym. :-P

Roger's interview went really well on Wednesday! He has his in-person interview this coming Tuesday, and he said the guy was dropping hints on the phone that they want to hire him. It's still looking good!

Our former roommate Alex might be coming to visit in about two weeks, which would be very fun. Alex works in LA now, and he was supposed to be transferred to a different office in LA, but it turns out there might be a job opening in Oakland, so Roger's doing his best to convince him to come work up here. My immediate reaction was something like, "I don't really want Alex to come live with us." But then I realized that him moving "here" doesn't mean he'd actually be moving here here; he'd have his own place, of course, duh. I guess I just associate Alex living somewhere nearby to mean like... in a different part of the same house as us. Anyway, it would be great if he moved up here, so that will be really fun if it works out.

I'm excited on many levels right now, but partially because I just ordered this bed yesterday. Now people will have a real place to sleep when they come visit, and it will be a huge space saver for our extra bedroom. I think it's nice enough that we don't need another bed, which means we can basically make that room into an office for Roger and keep the bed in the closet until we need it. So that combined with the possibility of this job, combined with the fact that I'm really tired of doing homework, means I had fun looking at the Ikea website yesterday and coming up with ideas for fun stuff to get for our house. I can't wait to be able to make it look nice!

Ok, I should probably get ready for class. In 11 days, my semester will be effectively over, and I can sleep in, run with my dogs in the cool December sun, and hopefully fix up our house! Que la vie est belle.

Quick Morning Update

Ouf. Apologies for the lack of updates the past week or so; Thanksgiving was lovely, but now it is over, and I'm kicking it into 5th gear for the end of the semester. Just to make myself feel better (since the list of things is somehow not as overwhelming when I actually write it out), here is everything I need to have done by December 15th:

- Record my Armenian speaker for my phonetics project (Thursday)
- Write a 3-4 page response to a paper (Friday)
- Finish reviewing abstracts for the Berkeley Linguistics Society conference (Monday)
- Give a presentation on an article from the Journal of Phonetics (Monday)
- Turn in my last phonetics assignment (Monday)
- Turn in my syntax term paper (Tuesday)
- Write two reviews of papers for my pronunciation seminar (next Thursday)
- Study for my phonetics final (next Saturday)
- Turn in my phonetics project (Monday, 12/15)

...I think that's everything. It's really not so bad, and it's all spread out enough that I think I can manage it.

In less stressful news, I *finally* got a haircut yesterday, and it feels *great*. While no one will ever replace Kathleen at Hairbenders, I think I have found my Berkeley haircut lady, and she is wonderful.

And finally, I've been waiting to update about this, but I can't wait any more: Roger has a job interview this afternoon! The CEO of that place I mentioned last time is calling him today at 2:00 for a phone interview, and assuming it goes well, they're meeting in person on Monday. Cross your fingers and toes for him, but he's such a smarty, and he interviews really well, so I'm sure he'll do great. I'll let you know how it goes!

(a secret)

Psssst, don't say anything to Roger, but I wanted to let you know he is in serious talks with a start-up tech firm just south of San Francisco. They're moving to the financial district in the next few months, and they need an accountant/business manager to help them plan for expansion.

Do not, I repeat, do not get excited. This could fall flat on its face, in which case he will simply continue his search, which is actually going quite well these days. (He's found quite a few jobs in the past few weeks that he's been excited about and has applied for. This is just the first one he's heard back from concretely.)

I will now resume eating my oatmeal, drinking my coffee, and doing my syntax homework, because it's 5:30 in the morning and I need to get it done for class today. I will keep you updated. About Roger, not the stupid homework. :)

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH

Today is really weird, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I had a fabulous run with my doggies this morning. Here's where we went:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2409169

We ran up into the hills for a bit, then looped all the way down and ran along the Bay, where I discovered where all the other runners go on the weekends! It was a gorgeous morning, the dogs had a blast and are completed exhausted now, and I'm extremely pleased that I can still crank out a solid 10-miler. I still have secret hopes of running the Napa Valley Marathon in March, but I don't actually think that will happen. I think it's more realistic to shoot for San Francisco at the end of July...

Anyway, besides just feeling happy to be alive, running around town really makes me connect with this place. Every time I go out for a run, I put some more pieces into my mental layout of how the town fits together, and it feels a little bit more mine. That's one great thing about running that I think all other runners would agree about: you form a rather intimate connection with the landscape, and you really get a feel for the different parts of town.

So that part of the morning was great, and then I got home and made pumpkin pancakes with gingerbread syrup. Oh man. I'll be doing that again very soon, and I'd be perfectly happy to share the recipe with anyone who wants it. Everyone deserves to experience such deliciousness.

Now I'm wasting time before I jump in to some homework, but I also needed a second to readjust my brain. I guess part of the reason today was so weird is there was a big contrast between feeling great after running and then talking to my stepmom about my little brother. He's been in and out of the hospital constantly the past few weeks, and I am so frustrated, as are they. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him, she's losing her mind, and it really sucks that I can't even just stop by to say hello, or offer to babysit Amber, or something. Michael's going to see some specialists in Springfield tomorrow, though, so hopefully they'll figure something out and he'll get on the right track to recovery. That's what the "ARGH" is all about!

Ok. Now I'm going to do some homework. Oh, I didn't even tell you about going to the football game yesterday! It was really fun, but really bizarre because I've never been to a football game where it was a little uncomfortably warm and I had to worry about getting a sunburn. Football games are supposed to be cold! These Californians really don't get it. But we won, and it was a good (albeit very long) game.

Ok. Now it's time for homework. I hope this finds you well, and I'll do my best to update again soon; we have a long weekend for Thanksgiving, so I should have some time to say hello sometime in there!

Just thinking about this time last year...

... when I wrote this poem/thing. It's somewhere between short short story and prose poem, but in any case, I always liked how it turned out, and running with the dogs just now made me think of it. I hope you like it too.

Heart

We run north, towards the woods, and the colors are breathtaking. The change of the seasons has created a landscape collage of competing eras—the sky is saturated with the pastel blue of a Technicolor film, but the leaves and the earth are a rusty, sepia brown reminiscent of old family photographs. It is too late in the season for burning leaves, and the subtle smells of withering autumn register in my brain. I smell dirt. Soggy wood. The lurking cold that will surely have pounced on us before we get the chance to run again.

We chit-chat, but we both know that our words carry little importance. We are out for the sheer joy of being out, of being alive, of feeling the blood pulsing beneath our skin. We are strong and healthy, and we are looking at the world.

* * * * *

The human heart is divided into halves. The left side of the heart pumps oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to feed the rest of the body. The right side collects the body’s oxygen-depleted blood and channels it to the lungs so that it may be replenished.

These compartments are of course finite, and as one expands, the other must necessarily contract in order to make space. Like the joys and the sorrows it undergoes, the heart is at once consistent and fluctuating. As surely as blood rushes from one chamber to another, fullness and contentment inevitably cede to emptiness and melancholy.

Our whole lives are regulated by this constant circulation; our sentiments ebb and flow only because our ventricles propel and replenish as they should. We are machines with swirling emotions. We can choose to let our hearts beat quickly or slowly, and we can choose how much life we transmit through our bodies.

Breathe in—fill your chest with cold autumn air and beauty and joy. Breathe out— revel in the empty space, the hollowness. We are alone, and we cannot inhale forever, but we are strong, and we will inhale again.

* * * * *

We press on through the woods, the leaves crunching dully under our feet, my breath coming in regular puffs of dissipating fog. This is the last warm day of autumn, and already I anticipate the first warm day of spring. We will lace up our shoes and take to the road, relishing the stinging in our legs that comes from frosty air and rusty muscles. As surely as winter makes the earth inhospitable, spring brings us back amongst the trees, on our path. Autumn and spring, fulfillment and discontent, blood and oxygen, vacillating like a beating heart.

The bright side of writing my syntax paper all day today...

... is that it may result in me taking a trip to Illinois in May! Let me explain.

So we have a syntax paper to write this semester. Anyone who has ever talked to me about linguistics will know that I am not a big fan of syntax, to put it mildly. But I tried to pick a topic that I find somewhat interesting, and I wasn't too terribly bummed about it anyway. I'd rather write a paper than our normal homework assignments. The main thing is that we have a rough draft due Thursday, we have the day off school today for Veterans' Day, and I'm basically going to spend the whole day reading and writing (after I finish this blog entry, run with the dogs, eat, and shower).

The cool part is that the department here sent out a call for papers for a conference taking place at the U of I in late May, and my paper idea can very easily be adapted for presentation at this conference. So now I'm feeling more inspired; I can write the bulk of it today, fix it up for the end of the semester, submit an abstract to see if I can present at the conference in May (I think I have a very good shot of getting in for a variety of reasons - I can tell you more about that if you like), and then I'll just do a little supplementary work on the thing (which I have a really fun idea for) before hopefully going home to present it in May. Isn't that all very fun?

I will try to keep all of these cools ideas in mind today when I'm getting increasingly bummed out about spending the day writing a paper about syntax.

Here is where I'm going running in a minute: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2388662

Cool, eh? We're the very last house on Curtis street. If you zoom in, you can see the big redwood tree on the front/side of our house!

I love my husband.

It is true. I do. I say this now especially because he is on the back deck, sanding down and installing a window pane. Why, you ask? The short answer is that today has been far more eventful than I had hoped. Eventful days are not necessarily bad... it's just that they usually end up being expensive.

The long answer is this: I took the dogs on a lovely run this morning. Somewhere between 6 and 7 miles all over Berkeley - we went through campus and some of the really nice neighborhoods in North Berkeley, where the streets are winding and hilly, the houses are big, and there are big, beautiful trees and parks for all the rich people who can afford to live there. The weather was fantastic - about 60 degrees with a very slight breeze, and I felt great.

We got back and the dogs totally crashed. I made pancakes for me and Roger, Rye curled up in his chair, and Huck sprawled out asleep on the bed. This has become somewhat of a Saturday morning ritual, and it's very nice. I was getting ready to head over to check out the 4th street shopping district, a nice trendy up-and-coming sort of area just northwest of here, because a girl I know works in a gourmet cheese shop, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to go taste some gourmet cheese, say hi, and see what other shops are over there. As I'm looking up the best route to get there on the computer, I hear this weird, loud crashing sound and Roger yelling, "Huck, no!!!" I go running into the bedroom as Huck comes running out. There is broken glass everywhere and the window is shattered. A lady was apparently walking by with her dog, and Huck attacked the window, like he does sometimes. He wasn't hurt at all (thank goodness), but I immediately became extremely depressed. Bordering on slight despair, really. It's Saturday, it's supposed to rain today, and we have a hopelessly shattered window that we can't afford to repair. Great.

Not only that, but there is nowhere open to repair the window even if we had the money. I find a guy who apparently does great work, but he's not open until Monday morning, and charges a minimum $105 labor. And all the reviews I find for his store say he's by far the cheapest they've found. Excellent. This just keeps getting better. I'm wondering if we can tape up some cardboard until Monday and just trust that one of the four or five jobs Roger applied to this week will get back to him soon...

Roger says he thinks he can repair it himself if he can get the window out of the wall, and if we can get the glass cut and find some window glaze. I search some more for glass cutting places, and it turns out the Ace Hardware in downtown Berkeley cuts glass, and they're open seven days a week. I call over, and they have a big enough piece of the right thickness, and they can cut it for me. I take the bus over, get the glass, plus the glaze and some glazing points (I learned some new words today), and it comes out to $30! Truly excellent, no sarcasm this time.

The only down side is they refuse to put it in cardboard for me, so I have to carry this big sheet of glass to the bus stop and back home on the bus, but at least it stopped raining, and I made it home without breaking the thing.

That is the story of why Roger is on the back deck sanding down and installing a window pane, and why I love my husband.

Berkeley celebrates (i.e. FREAKS OUT) about Obama

http://www.dailycal.org/mediabox.php?id=227&type=slideshow

This kind of makes me wish I were on campus Tuesday night, but it mostly makes me glad I wasn't! And it definitely makes me glad I'm not a Republican in this town. Holy moly.

I'm glad Obama was elected, but I'm realistic, too. I think he'll be a good president in a lot of ways, but I'm not going to join in some crazy mob mentality, creepy slogan chanting, flock of propagandists. He's still a politician, people. A great one, yes, and that doesn't mean he's a bad person. I really and truly think he'll do great things. But he's still a politician.

One thing I'm sure about, though, is I am beyond bummed that Proposition 8 passed. What a bunch of ignorant bigots. And I can say that because this is my blog. Bigots, bigots, bigots. I wish they would've worded the thing as a two part question:

1) Do you believe adults should have the legal right to enter into a marriage agreement in the State of California?

2) Do you believe that some people should have more rights than others?

Done deal.

Just for fun...

... here's a quick stab at translating the raining poem from my last post for y'all. I'm not going to take the time to make it rhyme or anything, but it's still quite nice.

Il pleure dans mon coeur
There is crying in my heart
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Like there's rainfall on the town;
Quelle est cette langueur
What is this languor
Qui pénètre mon coeur ?
That penetrates my heart?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Oh, soft sound of the rain
Par terre et sur les toits !
On the ground, and on the rooves!
Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie,
For a listless heart,
Ô le chant de la pluie !
Oh, the song of the rain!

Il pleure sans raison
There is crying for no reason
Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure.
In this heartbroken heart.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?...
What! No betrayal?...
Ce deuil est sans raison.
This mourning has no reason.

C'est bien la pire peine
It's truly the worst pain
De ne savoir pourquoi
To not know why
Sans amour et sans haine
With no love and no hate
Mon coeur a tant de peine !
My heart knows such pain!

Hmm... little melodramatic, maybe. But trust me, the words are very lovely in French.

Il pleure dans mon coeur, comme il pleut sur la ville...

Ok, that's not really true, but I always loved that poem. It's just so beautiful. Ô bruit doux de la pluie / Par terre et sur les toits ! / Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie, / Ô le chant de la pluie !

Anyway, it is raining! For the first time since we've been here, it is truly and actually raining. Big, soft, gentle drops that just kind of melt into your skin as they fall on you. I know this because I took the dogs for a run in it this morning, and it was glorious. When we left, it was just barely misting out, but then it opened up a bit and we got hit with some fat, wet raindrops. I almost headed home, but it let up again, and when you're already to the point where you can't get any wetter, you might as well keep going. I suppose I should add that it's about 60 degrees out here, so it just feels like a lovely spring rain.

It sounds like it's slowing up now. I wanted to share these pictures with you; my friend Stephanie and I went up in Sather Tower (aka the Campanile) last weekend on a beautiful sunny day. The Campanile is a really big tower on campus that overlooks the whole Bay Area, and on a clear day, it's gorgeous. Unfortunately, it was a bit smoggy last Saturday, but you can still get the gist.


A bunch of UCLA students headed up to the football game, with the Campanile in the background.


The Campanile up close. It's pretty tall - you have to take an elevator to the top.


Looking down through campus from the foot of the tower. If you click on the picture, you can just make out the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. You can see it really well on a clear day, which is extremely cool.


Memorial Stadium, Cal-style. We could barely make out the scoreboard for the football game from inside the tower. Cal was winning. Oh yeah, "Cal" is insider code for UC Berkeley.

Looking down Telegraph Avenue, one of the main drags of Berkeley/Oakland, into downtown Oakland.

And just in case you forgot what I look like, here I am at the top of the tower, with San Francisco in the background.

Where did October go??

Seriously! How can it possibly be October 22nd?? Time goes SO much faster for me when I'm in school. The year I was in Urbana after college felt like it took forever (partially in a good way, mind you; it was a very relaxing year in a way), and I'm somehow most of the way through this semester already! It's unreal.

I'm pretty much done with mid-term season now, I think. Not that I really had any midterms, but I did have a lot of stuff to do these past few weeks, and I think I have a bit of a break for a few weeks now before my end of the semester stuff will be due. The main thing on my mind right now is still my National Science Foundation fellowship application. It's almost done, but once I get it handed in and it's completely out of my hands, it'll be a minor weight lifted off my shoulders. And it's due November 6th, so I don't have too much longer to wait! I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend, actually....

Hmm, what else... things are pretty good, really. Roger hasn't been hired on anywhere yet, so we're both frustrated and anxious about that, but we'll be okay on money for a while longer since I just raked in some birthday cash last week! (Thanks again, everyone!) The weather is fantastic, and I've been squeezing in about two runs a week with the dogs. It's funny; they're not in as good a shape as they used to be! I used to have to do at least 7-8 miles with them to even put a dent in their energy for the rest of the day, but we did 6 on Saturday and they napped the rest of the day. It's ok - race registration just opened for next year's San Francisco Marathon, and I'll probably try to train for it and actually run it this summer. :)

I'm getting excited about my classes for next semester, too. I'm only going to take four, I think, and I don't think it will be nearly as rigorous a semester as this one. Which means I should be able to run more regularly, which is what brought me to this paragraph. Anyway, I'm taking a MATH class, and I'm very excited about that. I haven't had math since calculus in my senior year of high school, and I miss it! It's so concrete and unarguable and black and white. It's a puzzle where your answer is either right or wrong - no discussion needed. So that should be fun.

Well, I slept on my back funny last night and it's been bothering me today, so I think I'm going to sign off and go stretch it out a little. I'll leave you with some pictures from the past few days.


Boys asleep on the couch.

Saturday Downtown Berkeley farmer's market. Clock tower on campus in the background, through the trees.

Cute sleepy Huckleberry Hound.


Rye-dog on the lookout. He's decided the picnic table on the porch is his.

I can't figure it out.

There's like, four categories of people in this town. There's looks nice, is nice; looks nice, is actually crazy; looks crazy, is actually perfectly nice; and looks crazy, is definitely crazy. I suppose you could break the whole world up this way, but I think it's a more appealing system for Berkeley in particular because I haven't figured out a reliable metric for putting people in each category yet, so it seems like it would be a very useful system to master here. Let me give you an example for each category, ending with the one that happened to me this morning.

1) Looks nice, is nice. Our neighbors. They're originally from Wisconsin. They say hi to us when we run into them. 'Nuff said.

2) Looks crazy, is actually perfectly nice. Old black dudes with no teeth. I say this because I ran into one with my friend John a while back, and while I was initially a little concerned when he rushed up and started lisping at us, it turned out he just really wanted to find a butcher shop nearby so he could cook up some ox tail. Weird, yes, but also perfectly nice and not necessarily crazy.

3) Looks crazy, is definitely crazy. All the bums on Shattuck Avenue. The ones that gather to sing karaoke are kind of cute, as long as they don't sit down too close to you while you're waiting for the bus, but they're still definitely crazy.

4) Looks nice, is actually crazy. This is the one that gives me the most trouble. I was walking back from the grocery store this morning with a gallon of milk in a plastic bag. I'm strolling along thinking, "Man, this milk is pretty heavy," when I smile and say hi to a woman in her front yard. She smiles back and says, "Boy, that milk sure looks heavy."

Slightly weird thing to say, especially since I was just having that thought myself, but I just say "Yeah, it is!" as I'm walking by. She keeps talking to me though. (This is how these interactions generally go.) "Oh honey, you better be careful, those plastic bags are cutting into your hands!" And she's right, they are. But I think of it more as a temporary inconvenience than a real liability. "Those bags are so thin and that milk is so heavy, you're going to really hurt your hands!" At this point, I've stopped and turned back a little to say something to her. That's the problem with category 4 people; if they were definitely crazy, you could just keep walking, but when they seem like nice normal people at first, it seems so rude to just ignore them.

So I say something like, "Oh, it's ok, I don't have very far to walk." This is also true, but not a satisfactory response, because she replies, "Oh but honey, when you get older, it's gonna be a real problem. You should really think about getting some gloves for that. When you get older, you'll be sorry. So much damage to your hands. Your joints-"

At this point I'm getting a little concerned, because now I've stopped to talk to her and she's clearly not going to stop talking anytime soon, and now I don't know how to gracefully exit this conversation. I say something indistinct and noncommittal like, "Oh um, it's ok..." and smile politely as I try to back away. She's yelling after me though! "Oh honey, your hands, you really need to be careful..."

In retrospect, I suppose a nice way to end things would've been to start screaming "OH GOD I'M BLEEDING I CAN'T FEEL BELOW MY ELBOW I THINK MY FINGER JUST FELL OFF" etc. and run away. As is, I'm just left wondering: will I ever figure out how to avoid the loose screws?

Playing in the backyard

... and all is well. We were just outside playing with the dogs. Remember that first post when I talked about how happy the dogs are just to be alive, and how that makes me happy? Unless you are the Grinch, these pictures should put a smile on your face.







Happiest. Dogs. Ever.

Once a runner,

always a runner. Man. I've been in a minor funk this week. Very minor, really, but just feeling a bit blah. Most of it is just That Time of the Month stuff, but there are other little things too. I had a lot of work over the weekend. Poor Rye pulled a muscle in his leg and he makes me sad when all he can do is sit there all day. We're trying to restrict his movement as much as possible so he'll get better, but that means Huck's movement gets restricted too, since I can't just let Huck out to play, or just take Huck on a walk. So we have two sad, blob-like dogs lying around the house all day. Roger still hasn't heard back about the job we both really want him to get, so he's at a bit of an impasse. I guess I have kind of a sad, blob-like husband too, come to think of it... He's not actually sad, of course, I just feel bad for him because I know I'm anxious for something to work out for him, so he must be ten times as anxious as I am, and I'm trying to keep that in mind and stay optimistic for both of our sakes.

But I really think it's time to shoe-horn running back into my schedule. The problem is, it turns out I'm really really a morning person. I still can't believe that's true, but it definitely is. My brain just shuts down after about 8:00 (pm, at least), and I can't get any work done. So while my classmates are doing their homework from 8:00 to 1:00 am, I'm going to bed at 9:30 and waking up at 5:30 to get stuff done. I just think better in the morning. But as a result, I can no longer do my running in the morning, which is when I've been in the habit of doing it. Get up, go for a run, shower, start my day. It just makes sense. But now I have to work in the morning while my brain's still sharp, then go to class until early afternoon. I think I'll have to start running after class, and that will be perfect as the weather cools off. If I can run around 3:00 in the afternoon this fall and winter, it will still be light out, there won't be the evening traffic yet, and maybe it will energize me so I can get some work done in the evening too.

The thing about "once a runner, always a runner". Sometimes I forget that I really am, deep down, a runner. There are few (if any) things in the world that make me feel so at peace. It's such a zen-like state... my brain quiets down and all is well with the world. I think it's just such a primal act; all of the cerebral stuff fades away for a while, and there is nothing but movement, the physical act of propelling myself forward. It's extremely refreshing.

I have some more things I'd like to tell you about Berkeley, but I'm getting very sleepy. I tested out a new running club tonight, and we ran out to the Bay and along the shore as the sun was setting. There was one girl I really liked, but she turned around halfway through the run because she didn't think she'd make it the whole way. Overall they were a perfectly nice group of folks, I suppose, but I don't think they're the group for me. I'll probably go back again sometime just to have people to run with, but I'm still on the lookout.

Anyway, the point is, I got in a very nice run tonight, and now I'm ready for bed before another long day tomorrow. This is a bit of a meandering post, but I just wanted to let you know I'm still alive, and I keep hoping I'll be able to have a post like "Roger got the job he really wanted and now we have lots of money to do fun stuff!" Not yet. But maybe soon.

San Francisco!

This post will be heavy on the pictures and light on the typing, because I have lots of homework to get back to! I just wanted to share some pictures of San Francisco with you guys.

Yesterday three of my classmates and I went into the city to just walk around and take in the sights. It was an absolutely gorgeous day for it - around 65-70 degrees and sunny. We took the bus (which is free with our student IDs and only take about 35 minutes from Berkeley), had lunch in China Town, and hiked up to Coit Tower, which is a tower on Telegraph Hill that overlooks the city and the San Francisco Bay. We didn't go up to the top of the tower, unfortunately, because it costs $5 and we had already splurged by eating out for lunch! But the view was still fantastic, and the sea breeze was wonderful.

So here are some pictures of San Francisco! I hope you enjoy them!

This is Union Square. I don't really know what's so great about it except that it's famous and it's a big open space in the middle of the city where people apparently sit and drink overpriced coffee. There are also overpriced shops surrounding it too (Gucci, Versace, etc.).


This is the entrance to China Town, complete with a trolley and the
Transamerica Pyramind peeking out in the background.

Here's a nice close-up of a trolley.
It costs like $7 to ride one, so I won't be doing that any time soon.

This one gives you an idea of just how hilly San Francisco is.
I turned around and took this one as we were hiking up to Coit Tower.


Ahhhh. View of the Golden Gate Bridge from the steps of Coit Tower.


Ahhhhh again. This is looking back across the Bay toward Berkeley
and Oakland. The bridge on the right edge of the photo is the
Oakland Bay Bridge, which you can drive across to go from the East Bay
(where Berkeley and Oakland are) to the city.