What I want to be when I grow up.

(and up and up and up)

Running... languages... the usual...

I'm not sure where this blog entry is going, because I don't have anything in particular to say, so we'll just see what happens.

Well, for one thing, I had a really great run on Sunday. Sorry if my running talk gets old, but it truly is an important part of my life, so it naturally comes to mind when I think about what I've been doing lately. Not only is it a constant, structuring, stabilizing force in my life, it also serves as a demarcator of sorts; by being one thing that remains constant over the years, no matter where I go or what else I'm doing in my life, I can measure the rest of my life against it, in a way. There is always running, and so how my running is going directly relates to how the rest of my life is going. I go through periods where I don't run very much because I'm too busy doing other things, or because I'm feeling blah and don't have the motivation to get out the door. Thankfully both of those things occur rather infrequently, and for short periods of time, because getting out and moving has a huge impact on my mood. I honestly cannot remember the last time I got home from a run feeling worse than when I left the house.

But anyway, I had a great run on Sunday, because I did some speed work. I haven't done any speed work since we lived in Urbana, and it is so exhausting and so rewarding at the same time. There is something supremely satisfying about pushing your body beyond what it thinks is possible. Like, nanny nanny boo boo, body, I showed you, you can do it. It's such a triumph of will, and leaves you with that wonderfully spent feeling. First I did about 4.25 miles with the dogs so I didn't have to feel guilty about leaving them at home, and also to break up the run. Then I ran up to a middle school track in north Berkeley (2 miles) and did 2 x 400 meters, 3 x 800 meters, and 2 x 400 meters again, as fast as I could, for a total of 2.5 miles of speed work, followed by 2 more miles back home, bringing my Sunday total to somewhere around 10.75 miles. I was a little sore yesterday and today, but in a really great way, and my goal is to keep this up - long runs every other Sunday, alternating with speed work of increasing length/intensity until my marathon in October. The race is a pretty tough course; I've heard it's harder than the San Francisco Marathon, and that wasn't exactly cake, although it wasn't as bad as I expected. In any case, I would of course like to beat my previous PR of 3:54... and as of now, I'm thinking my secret secret goal will be 3:40, but that's probably far too optimistic. We'll see how it goes.

In other news, I am getting so ridiculously excited to come home in August. In like, 3 weeks, that is! I am so tired of it being cold here. July in Berkeley seriously blows. I wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt today and I was chilly all day, but I'm still in disbelief and indignant and refusing to wear a jacket or turn the heater back on in July. It's July. Where are the frickin' mosquitoes and miserable temperatures? It all feels so wrong. So anyway, it will be fantastic to be legitimately hot again, even if you poor Midwesterners will probably be quite ready for the muggy 90 degree days to stop by then. I'm also really happy to be able to spend a few days in C-U and a few in Chicago; that's why it took me so long to plan this trip, because I have three very dear friends who will be in Chicago at various times in August, and I really want/need to see them all, so I had to find a time when all of our schedules could overlap. It will be a very quick trip, for sure, but I need some Midwest love before I embark on another year in California. Just gotta recharge those hometown batteries sometimes.

So here is something really great. I accidentally did a minor Amazon.com splurge the other day, and my books all got here today! I realized it was high time to get a real Spanish dictionary, since I think the Spanish thing is more than a passing phase and is hopefully here to stay, and then I saw this really fun looking book called "Street Spanish" that's all about slang in the different parts of the Spanish speaking world and comes with a CD! So of course I had to get that, I mean, come on. And then, (then!) I only needed to spend 60 cents to qualify for free Super Shipper Savings or whatever, so I had to get a book about French slang to complement my Spanish one. Mi pobrecito francés! No pude olvidarlo! (My poor French, I couldn't just forget it!) So today after I finished my Spanish homework I learned/was reminded how to say all sorts of inappropriate things in French, and it was quite fun.

I was also extremely pleased with myself today when we had a surprise in-class essay, and I filled up nearly a whole page, no dictionary, no problem. I probably made a few mistakes or said some things in a weird way, but it is so exciting to know that I have gone from being able to say next to nothing in Spanish just four weeks ago to being able to give a reasonably lengthy answer to the prompt, "Have you ever visited Latin America? If so, where have you been and what did you do? If not, where would you like to go and why?" Boo. Yah. Present perfect, imperfect, preterite, present, future, and conditional tenses all in one essay, baby. Now that is progress.

I'm also excited (and this part is a little silly) because I scheduled my next haircut today, and I'm totally going to practice my Spanish on my haircut lady. She is the cutest, sweetest little woman from Mexico, and she's so adorably self-concious of her English, and it's really not that bad at all. But the next time I see her, I'm gonna bust out the Spanish and let her laugh at how I have to say things in a weird way because I have no vocabulary, and it should be a good time, I think.

Okay, that's enough for now. Je vous aime tous et j'ai vraiment hâte de vous voir au mois d'août! Gros gros gros bisous!

Momentum

It's funny; I am a creature of momentum, as it turns out. I guess I already knew this about myself, but now that I'm back in class after a few weeks off, the effect has been more exaggerated than I remember. I know I have this problem where when I have no structure in my life, it's very easy for me to do absolutely nothing. If I have a whole day with very little that I actually need to do, I tend to do almost nothing. Whereas if I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off, I get so much done, and it's self-perpetuating, in a way.

The Nothingness Problem has become more evident to me since starting grad school. Over winter break and spring break, I tend to re-check the same websites over and over again, stare into space, and end up watching mindless TV. Or sometimes good TV (Dexter, Mad Men, House, etc.). But the fact remains that if I don't have anywhere to be or go at a certain time, I can't even manage to get the most basic things done around the house, e.g. loading the dishwasher, doing a load of laundry, running the vacuum cleaner.

On the other hand, when I have way too much to do, I just do do do. Now that I'm taking this 4 hour per day Spanish class, I'm getting all kinds of other stuff done, too. I'm back in the lab, running tons of experimental subjects, reading articles, learning some more programming... doesn't that seem backwards? It seems like 4 hours of Spanish should leave me burnt out and ready to zone out, and instead I'm like, gee, what else can I do today? It's like the sense of accomplishment spills over into other areas of my life. Especially this week, I've been realizing how much better I feel when I feel productive. I wonder if that Northern European work ethic is genetic or something... centuries of German and Swedish ancestry converging to make me feel like a better person when I actually get some work done.

I'm also realizing that this is something I need to be in tune with over the next few years, as my required classes become fewer and fewer and I have to be my own driving force to get any work done. I guess I'll have to get better at imposing deadlines on myself and creating my own structure, or I'm never going to be able to write a dissertation...

Another thing I've been thinking about recently is how gosh darn much I love learning new languages. Taking this Spanish class is really reminding me why I got into linguistics in the first place. Language acquisition and historical language change are totally where it's at, dudes. I am completely fascinated and in love with learning Spanish. I do not know why I didn't try harder to really learn it earlier, but maybe that's a good thing, because it's been a great pick-me-up this summer. I love, love, love seeing the differences between Spanish and French and trying to figure out how they got to be how they are. There is so much that is so similar, but today we started to dig deeper into the Spanish tense system, and it's significantly different from French. French has undergone so many radical simplifications, both phonologically and syntactically (although these are sometimes related, I think) that it's a really asymmetrical system in a lot of ways. I realize this may be nonsense lingua-babble to whoever is reading this, but bear with me. From what I can tell thus far, Spanish has a much more "symmetrical" grammar than French, which means it makes a theoretically "prettier" system in a lot of ways, but there are way more forms to learn.

I think the main example I'm thinking of is the fact that modern French just doesn't have a simple past tense. It has a "composed past", meaning the past tense is made up of co-opted forms of the present, in a way. So in French, you can't say, "I ran", you have to say, "I have run" (j'ai couru). But the way you say "I have run" is also "I have run". And there's no difference in the forms for "I run" and "I am running" (je cours). So you have a lot of the same forms doing multiple jobs in French, which is partially what I mean about it being asymmetrical. But in Spanish, there are distinct forms for all of those things. And I have to memorize them this weekend. :) But it's really interesting to see two systems that are clearly very closely related historically, but that have diverged in really interesting ways over time. And someday - someday! - I will speak Spanish. I will.

So much for that. Man, today just feels like a Friday. My brain is tired and I'm having trouble concentrating, which is why I'm blogging instead of working. But I got so much done this week! Time for a justly merited evening off (as opposed to a lack-of-momentum one).

Wait, no, it's time for the announcement: I will be in Illinois in August, and I cannot wait! Just. Can't. Wait. Champaign August 12-15, and Chicago August 15-17. Mark your calendars and make some time to remind me why I miss my beloved Midwest so very much! I need lightning bugs and starry skies over empty cornfields, friendly folks and familiar places, and probably some Custard Cup. Very very much looking forward to it and can't wait to see as many of y'all as I can.