New House Pictures

We just got back from signing the lease for our new house, and while our new landlady admired Roger's bike, I was busy snapping pictures.

I'll be moving small things in this week, and we're planning on finishing up the big stuff on Saturday and spending our first night there that night.

Awesome rec room:


I think this will be the seating area. The half bathroom is on the right, and the laundry/storage room is on the left:

Looking through the kitchen towards the dining area:


Looking down the hall towards the rec room/backyard:


Bathroom (this shot is for my mom):


Entry area as seen from dining room:


Looking into the kitchen from the dining room:


Looking at the dining room from the entry area:


The Galapagos Islands on our kitchen floor:


Looking through the rec room into the backyard, from the hallway:


The other side of the rec room (can you tell this is my favorite room?):

Looking towards the hallway and laundry room. I'm hoping to fit the dog crates under the stairs:


Backyard:


I love it!

What is wrong with these people?

First let me state that I do not believe in watering lawns. If you live in a climate where grass is not supposed to grow, do not try to make grass grow. (Exhibit A: Arizona) Especially since California has been in a drought situation for the past few years! And we're in the dry season anyway, for crying out loud! We only have two seasons, and their names tell you when things are supposed to grow and when they're not!

I say this because I experienced another stunning display of Berkeley hypocrisy today. These people are all high and mighty about saving the environment, and yet they maintain their unnaturally lush, green yards year round. Today I was outside actually doing some gardening - trimming back a bush and doing some weeding - and my neighbor across the street (the one I particularly don't like) comes over and says, "You know, when you first moved in here, there was a sprinkler system that would come on and water the plants. We have one just like it, it's really simple..."

Awkward pause while he stares at me condescendingly.

"Uh yeah, I know," I say. "We turned it off because it was using so much water."

"Is it broken?"

"No, we just turned it off. It was really expensive."

"Did you turn the water down or turn off the timer? Because I know how the timer works. I can show you right now, if you want." And he starts heading for the side of our house!

I'm stunned. In retrospect, I should've countered his unbelievable rudeness by launching into the rant I started this post with and trying to make him feel guilty for deepening the drought with his ubergreen landscaping. Instead, I said something like, "It's in the backyard" to stop him from tinkering with our watering system. And then he offered to come over some time and turn it back on for us, and I said thanks and hoped that he would go away faster.

I can't believe these people are so obsessed with our yard! Being obsessed with how your own yard looks is weird enough, but other people's too? First the weeds, now the fact that our grass is turning brown. It's supposed to turn brown, you idiot. I refuse to water the grass for 8-9 months out of the year. I take that as a sign that we do not live in a climate that supports grassy lawns.

The thing that really gets me is that he's not saying it in a friendly way. It's not like he's genuinely concerned that we might not know how to work our sprinkler system. He's just informing us that he does not approve of the fact that some of our grass is turning brown, and he intends to do something about it. I would like to add that our front landscaping is really not that bad. The plants are still quite nice, there are absolutely no weeds (anymore), and there are lots of purple flowers. It's just that some of the grass has started to go dormant because it hasn't rained since March, and it's not going to rain again until November.

I am so glad we're moving.

July is for new adventures.

A quick, picture-heavy update before I go to dinner. We're going for Ethiopian food tonight. Should be fun!

So one adventure I will be embarking upon in July is the San Francisco Marathon!! That's right, I finally took a deep breath and signed up today! I put in a good 20-miler this morning (12 miles with my new running partner and 8 miles with the dogs; it's good to break it up a little like that), and it went off without a hitch and I feel weirdly good right now. Not ravenously hungry, not particularly tired, and only a little stiff. So I think I'm ready! This will be me in one month:



Aaaahh! Races are so exciting! And a 5:30 start time in downtown San Francisco, plus running across the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn will undoubtedly be awesome.


Adventure #2 (which will actually transpire before Adventure #1) is, of course, that we're moving. I walked by the new house and snapped a few quick shots the other day. As I said before, it's nothing particularly lovely to look at from the outside, so part of me wants to not even post these shots, but I realize that curious minds want to know. :)

That last one is from a little down the street so you can see the neighborhood a little bit. We're both so excited to get moved in! Can't wait to be there, get settled, and show y'all what the inside looks like.

The only other thing I would add is that I've been working on a very cool art project that I'm extremely pleased with and proud of. Remember I told you about the Galapagos Islands in black ink on our new kitchen floor? Well, I've been contemplating decorating our little dining room table for some time now, and I was thinking of putting flowers all over it to go with the flora/fauna theme of the floor. But then I thought, y'know, as much as I love biology, I'm a linguist, and I should do something that reflects what I do while still complementing the aesthetics of the floor. So this is what I came up with:


Basically, I covered the table and chairs with the words "one language is never enough" in several dozen different languages. It was particularly fun because I haven't done an art project in a long time, and because I was able to come up with something original that actually turned out how I envisioned it! I'm particularly pleased with the the non-Roman scripts, e.g. the Chinese and Japanese you see in the last picture below. They were challenging because I free-handed it all; I printed off little strips of paper with the words I wanted, carefully copied them onto the table in pencil, then went over them and jazzed them up a bit with black permanent marker.




I actually have 2 or 3 more to finish, but the vast majority of it is finished.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. Love to all!

House!

We have a house!! I wish I had pictures to share with you, but I don't yet, so you will have to settle for a verbal description (edit: and a roughly sketched floorplan) right now.

So I posted a "housing wanted" ad on Craigslist a while back, and I haven't been getting much feedback as a result. This is undoubtedly because I specifically said that we have two large dogs and would like a house with a yard for them, if possible. That's enough to scare most landlords away, I assure you.

Yesterday, we helped my friend John move into his new place in Oakland, and it is really, really great. I know we were both feeling pretty jealous - it's this awesome, great apartment that's bigger than our house now and has fantastic windows, a widow's walk, and a sun room, up on the third floor. It wasn't that much fun actually doing the moving, but that's what friends are for, and we were happy to help, it was just a lot of stairs for one day.

Anyway, we got home all sweaty and tired, and I checked my email and had a really nice email from a lady saying she's a dog lover with a house for rent in South Berkeley that sounds like it might work for us. I called her up, she happened to be there, and I rode my bike over to have a look at it.

Now, it's not that fantastic looking from the outside. That's not to say it's in any way ugly, it's just wholly unremarkable. But as soon as I walked in the front door, I was immediately impressed. It is so airy, bright, and cheerful, and even though there's no furniture in it, very homey. Just inside the front door is a little living room/sitting area, and to the right is a little dining nook. The whole front part of the house has vaulted wood ceilings with these great skylights. Then to the north of the dining area (the upper right quadrant of the front part, if you will) is the kitchen. I love the kitchen. It's somewhat set off from the front part of the house, in that there's a wall between it and the living room area, but it opens to the hallway on one side, and on the side that leads to the dining room, there's a little bar with these cool wine racks on top. Hang on, I'm going to draw a diagram of the floor plan, because this is getting confusing.


And oh, the skylights! If I remember right, there are two skylights over the living room, one over the dining area, and a big one over the kitchen. It's so bright and sunny, I loved it. And, I love this part too, the owner is a biologist, and she has a design in the shape of the Galapagos Islands on the kitchen floor! It is so cool! (The Galapagos is where Charles Darwin did most of his research, and with Roger and me both being very science-minded folks, we both loved this.) She actually worked in the Galapagos for three years, and when she redid the floor, she thought it would be cool to incorporate that part of her life into her new house.

Okay, right, so, all the floors are hardwood. (Yay for no carpet.) Down the hallway is a full bathroom immediately on the left, then the two bedrooms right across from each other, and at the end of the hall is a huge awesome rec-room. It's like a big family room, and we are so so excited about it. There will be room to have one corner be an office area, then one part will be a sitting area (eventually we want to buy a cool projector so we can have people over for movie nights), and we'll even have plenty of space left over for the dog crates to be in one corner. Then there's a utility room with a brand new washer and dryer and storage space along the side, and another half bathroom with an awesome brand new shower stall. I think we'll keep the nice air mattress we have now, and use the rec room as a guest room when people come to visit.

So at the end of the rec room is a big, nice patio door that leads to the back yard. The house is on a very long, narrow lot, so there's a somewhat narrow but decent sized backyard for the dogs, and it extends all along the side of the house for a nifty little dog run area. The fence is very nice and we won't have to worry about it falling apart! And there's an apple tree and a nectarine tree back there too, plus a garage that we won't be able to use, but that's fine. The owner is using it for storage for her stuff, and she said she can make some room for us too, but we'll never be able to put a car in there or anything.

I wish I had pictures to show you. It is so, so great, and we are so excited about it. It will be ready for move-in by July 15th, and I'll be sure to take pictures then. Oh, it's also about a half mile northwest of Ashby BART station, so Roger will be able to walk to BART to go to work! And it's even closer to campus than our house now, so I can easily walk, bike, or take the bus to get to class, just like I do now.

Ahhhhh relief. It was just getting to the point where we were getting a little antsy, and now of course we're really glad we waited. I kept telling myself all along that we should wait until we really find the right place for us, and we did and now it paid off!

So. Our new address, starting in mid-July will be 1633 Ward St, Berkeley, CA 94703. (If you type it into Google Maps and hit "Street View", you can get a look at the front of the house, if you're so inclined.) Easy to get to by public transit, lots of room for entertaining, no excuses for not having visitors!

Hooray!

Heeeeere, house-y house-y house-y...

An update! Because I'm tired of scouring Craigslist for a place to live, but it's not quite time to walk the dogs yet.
Whaddya think? Maybe we'll just move to this here house in the Berkeley hills. Not a bad view, right? Let's check out the specs:

5 bed/4 bath
Rent: $14,800/month (not a typo)
Deposit: $28,000

Haha! Hahaha! Best part:

"Entertaining friends and clients in this unique and magnificent setting is a must. Are you a ROCK STAR, CEO or PRO ATHLETE? If so, this home is for you!"


Uhhhh yeah. We'll keeping looking for our 2 bedroom house with a postage stamp lawn that will still cost us a small fortune, thankyouverymuch.

In other news, um, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm just wiling away the days reading random books and articles (but nothing important and/or related to school), running my dogs, and doing the occasional housework. I did laundry this week, that was exciting. Baked brownies and ate almost the whole pan by myself. Pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and got a nice blister on the inside of my thumb.

The thing is, it doesn't even feel like summer. Yes, I'm languishing away, getting to that point in my boredom where even though I know there are things I could be doing, if I would try a bit harder to think of them, my motivation is flagging and I've gotten into a little rut of nothingness. And everyone knows that's what summer's all about. But summer just isn't summer without 90 degree heat and air that's thick and swampy with humidity. This Bay Area "summer" is just like Bay Area spring, and not really much different than Bay Area winter, to tell you the truth. Sure, it's only cloudy in the mornings now, and it blows out and clears up around 1:00 every afternoon, but it still only gets up to 65 during the day, and it's still cool enough to sleep with a blanket at night. I'm not complaining, per se - I do realize that would be rather ridiculous - but it's weird. I'm not used to wearing long pants and sometimes a sweater in June.

It's actually warmer today, though, and I think it's supposed to be in the 70's for the next few days. We might go into the city tomorrow and get croissants and coffee at some French bakery. Roger said someone from work brought in pastries from this place called La Boulange and the croissants were awesome - real French style, nice and golden brown and crispy on the outside and everything. So maybe we'll have a date!!


Well, I don't have much else to say. I will most definitely update as soon as we find a new place to live, though, and that should hopefully be sometime relatively soon. There are two houses I have my fingers crossed for right now, but I haven't heard back from either landlord, so that's probably not the best sign...

It's okay. Life is good and we will find something soon, and then I'll let you know all about it!

Summer Update (or lack thereof...?)

How weird. First, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I updated. Next, I just got a very strange phone call. I'll come back to that in a second.

So summer's going well so far! My semester finished off great, I got everything in on time and my professors were generally very happy with my final projects. Since then, I've just been hanging out, reading, walking and running with my dogs, and looking for a house! Yes, that's right, I officially told our landlords we wouldn't be renewing our lease, so we're aiming to be moved out by the end of July. That gives us some time to find a place we really like, so I'm trying to just take it slow and really find a good place for us, where we can stay put happily for the next few years. I found a *very* promising place that I really like from its description and pictures, and I'm going up to have a look at it in person tonight, so I'm very excited. I'll take my camera, and if it works out, I'll post the pictures. :) It's right by El Cerrito Plaza BART, which is excellent on many levels. First, it's a really great neighborhood - very pretty, but much more homey and relaxed than where we are now. El Cerrito Plaza has tons of shops and is a great transportation hub, but this house is about 2-3 blocks away, which means it's still really convenient but far enough away that it's quiet and feels very residential. Anyway, I don't have my heart set on it or anything, but I think it'd be a good place for us, and I hope it seems as good in person as it does online. We shall soon find out.

Right, the weird phone call. So I decided to join a volleyball team! It's just a Berkeley Parks and Rec District recreational team, but I went to scrimmage with them on Sunday and it was a blast and it made all of my volleyball muscles sore, and I love that. I haven't had sore volleyball muscles in years! It's such a great full body soreness, all of these muscles I don't ever use in everyday life; all of my jumping and hitting and crouching and impact-absorbing muscles. Woo-hoo! Our first real game was supposed to be tonight, but the guy who organizes the team just called to tell me it's been pushed back to next week, which is why I can go to the El Cerrito open house tonight instead.

I'm not sure if I should tell you all why it was canceled, but I guess I might as well. There's been a spate of gang violence in south Berkeley over the past month or so. First there was that shooting not too far from our house (like half a mile, don't get too nervous!) that resulted in a crazy police chase and multiple people dying in a car wreck. (If you hadn't heard about that yet, there you go.) That was apparently retaliation for something that had happened in Oakland a while back. Then just last week, there was a drive-by shooting thing a mile or so southeast of here, which may or may not be related, but in any case, two little girls who were sleeping in their beds got killed when the bullets came through their wall. So so sad. So the city has called a town hall meeting tonight, and they're holding it in the gym where my volleyball team was supposed to play. I suppose gang violence is probably more important than my new volleyball team, however excited I am about it.

Well on that note... I should get going! Ugh, what a terrible note to end on, but I need to put on some nice clothes for the open house and print out a credit report, just in case I need to snap the place up on the spot. I may have pictures of our new place soon - stay tuned!

Today

Things I have already done today:

- Took the dogs for a walk. A really nice guy in his front yard had some treats in his pocket and he gave them some.

- Went through several hundred examples of the word 'head' in French. Don't ask.

- Couldn't take it anymore and decided to bake some madeleines. Ate madeleines and drank more coffee.

- Wasted time on Facebook and now on my blog.

Things I really need to do today:

- Stop eating madeleines and drinking coffee.

- Go back to sifting through examples of 'head' in French. I only have 200 more years' worth to go! I'll be so happy when this paper is written and turned in.

- Work on and hopefully finish my final data analysis problem for my stats class. Hopefully it will go off without a hitch.

- Walk the dogs again, enjoy some sunshine, and get some sleep so I can write my historical linguistics paper all day tomorrow!

Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d'un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j'avais laissé s'amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l'instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d'extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m'avait envahi, isolé, sans la notion de sa cause...

Ouf.

It's a French sound effect, that. Somewhere between ouch and oh man. I'm so tired of writing papers! So I'm writing in my blog instead!

I have two more papers to write for Monday. They really won't be so terribly bad, but it's so nice and sunny out, and I'm so tired of writing papers!!

Here is some news. We decided we're moving. Did I already mention this? I think we're going to move to El Cerrito. It's about a mile north of here, a very cute little town (hometown of John Fogerty, might I add), a little more spread out than Berkeley, and we should be able to get a perfectly nice house with a bigger yard, close enough to BART so that Roger can just walk there to go to work, for considerably cheaper. So there's really no reason for us not to move.

Especially since our neighbors here are so darned snooty! I'm not holding my breath for friendlier neighbors if we move to El Cerrito, but rents are move expensive in Berkeley for a reason. It's because all the snooty people want to be able to say they live in Berkeley or something. I dunno, but our neighbor across the street stopped Roger when he was walking the dogs this afternoon and told him he really needed to cut the grass immediately. Seriously? Who does that? And I assure you, our front "lawn" does not look that bad. (I saw "lawn" in quotes because it's like a 10'x10' patch of crappy plants anyway.) It's a little overgrown, yes, a little Urbana-ed out, if you will, but certainly no-friggin'-where near unsightly. Might I add that this woman is married to a man who watched us struggle to get our broken Jeep off a U-haul trailer from inside his house and then had the nerve to bring it up in conversation.

Did I tell you that story? So we get here with our poor broken Jeep, and we have to get it pushed up into our driveway so we can return the U-haul trailer. Thankfully two of my friends came over and helped us, but it was hard! We were all heaving and working really hard, and had no idea this douchebag was watching us from inside his house. So the next day, he sees Roger outside and casually says, "So I saw you had some trouble getting your Jeep into your driveway." What would possess someone to 1) watch us struggle from inside his house without so much as offering to help and 2) spontaneously bring it up in conversation the next day that he did so is utterly beyond my comprehension.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to moving on many levels. I really do like our house, and it's been great and honestly the best we could do for this year, but now that we have time to look, I think it's time to look for a better deal so we can get some more bang for our buck. We're making it okay, but it'd be nice to be able to save some money, and to be closer to BART so it doesn't take so dang long for Roger to get to work. He just told me this week that his company probably isn't moving until October (instead of July, as they had originally thought), so he'll still have quite a few more months of long commuting.

On the bright side, he's still loving his job. I love that he loves his job, it makes me so happy that he's in a good mood when he gets home every day. He's so funny - he came inside all flustered from talking to that snooty lady from across the street, then went out and bought a lawn mower. So now he's mowing the back yard like a cute little husband. Oh, I should also mention that our fence is completely falling apart. I know our landlords would fix it if we asked, but I kind of don't want to deal with it. They'll have to have people come and rip the whole thing out and re-dig it, probably, and I kind of just don't want to bother and just move instead.

Also, I think I'm going to try to sell the Jeep (finally) once I'm done with school next week. It'll be nice to have it out of the driveway, and whatever money we can get for it will be a little bonus.

Speaking of bonuses, I'm excited for my raise in August! Another up side of getting a Javits fellowship is that it pays more than the University of California ever possibly could. The only bad part is that I'm going to get paid one lump sum for June and July, and it comes out to less than I normally get per month, so we might be stretching by the time I get paid again in August! It's okay, I like cereal....

Well, I think I'm going to put a t-shirt and shorts on instead of this dress and take my toasty shoulders outside for another walk in the sunshine with the dogs. I'll be locked inside until Monday night writing papers, so I feel like I should enjoy the light of day while I can.

Love to all!

Big Sur Race Report

Time is really flying. Really really flying. But I owe you an update, so here we go!

The race last weekend was really great. Sara and I both had a wonderful time, and she did an amazing job. I can't imagine running that course for my first marathon! It was SO HARD! I was really glad I only did the 21-miler, because I was hurting by the end and ready to be done, so it was great when I could just stop! I've been telling people I'm doing "21 miles of the Big Sur Marathon", and they invariably say, "Why not do the whole thing? What's 5 more miles?" And I was tempted to convince myself of that too, and just sign up for the whole thing. But really, let me tell you: the last 5 miles matter. Right around 20-21 miles is when it starts to hurt, and it was so great to just stop at that point instead of having to slog through 5 more! So here's the play-by-play, in case you're interested:

We drove down Saturday morning, and it was so fantastic to get out of the Bay Area for a while. Don't get me wrong, I really like it here, but I'm just a country girl at heart. I need those wide open spaces and tracts of farm land - it just calms me right down to my soul. The countryside is so beautiful in this part of the country, too; rolling, green hills with views of the ocean and gently winding roads all the way down to Monterey, which is this cute little seaside town about 2 hours south of here, smushed right up against the rocky edge of the Pacific Ocean.

We got to our hotel around noon on Saturday, checked in, walked around for a while, got some lunch at a cute little seafood restaurant. Went back to the hotel and hung out in the hot tub for just a little while - we didn't want to get our legs too inflamed before the race (and we couldn't indulge in more hot tub time after the race for the same reason; you're supposed to take ice baths after marathons, not go hot tubbing!). Then we went to dinner with Sara's family, who were able to make it down for the race after all. They were very, very sweet, and I got to meet her daughter Charlie, who was just plum adorable. Luckily the ocean breeze and the walking had tired us out, so we went to bed at 8:00 and crashed!

Good thing, because we had to get up at 3:00 on Sunday morning. (Yes, I do realize that it takes a special kind of crazy to put myself through a weekend like this for fun.) We walked about a mile to downtown Monterey and boarded our buses to the start line. The race itself starts about 30 miles south of Monterey, at Big Sur, in a somewhat remote state park, and it takes about an hour to get there on all the winding roads in the dark.

At the 21-miler start, there weren't enough porta potties, so I waited until the race started to use one. I didn't actually get into one until after the race had started and everyone left, but that was okay because it was chip-timed, meaning my time didn't actually start until I crossed the start line. So I went potty and dropped of my sweat clothes at the truck, which was supposed to meet us at the finish line with our warm clothes (more on that in a minute). I didn't realize ahead of time that the 21-miler is traditionally a walking event, meaning that most of the people "running" it were actually walking the whole damn thing. Do not ask me why someone would want to walk 21 miles starting at 6:30 in the morning. That takes hours and hours and hours in the cold. Yes, I realize that running 21 miles at 6:30 in the morning sounds just as crazy to some, but at least it's over soon! And you get to push your body to the limit and see what it can do! It's painful and exhilarating and a challenge and it's all about mind over matter and psychological drama and going fast. Walking 21 miles is just... silly.

Anyway, because of the porta potty thing and the fact that these walking weirdos all got started before me, I had a heck of a time passing people for the first two miles. There just wasn't enough room on the road, and they didn't really want to get out of my way. After I cleared all of the walkers, though, I settled into my pace and the race started to get harder. Big Sur is all about the hills. The first half of the race is punctuated by one massive climb. It's not even really a hill, because it's so long. It's just like this never ending incline up to Hurricane Point. So from mile 5 to mile 7 (mile 10 to 12 for the marathoners) you're just slogging up this ridiculous hill (600 feet of elevation gain), although at the base of it there's this big Taiko drumming squad pounding out this really primitive-tribal-samurai rhythm and it just makes you like YEAH, hill, BRING it. For at least the first half mile, anyway.

Then you get to Hurricane Point and realize why it's called that. There are like 40 mph gusts of wind (not exaggerating), and it was about 40 degrees at this point, and I literally almost got knocked off my feet. You're standing overlooking the Pacific Ocean, having just dragged yourself up this ridiculous hill, and the gusts of wind just cut right through you. It was pure insanity, to tell you the truth. Thankfully, the wind was somewhat blocked for the 2 mile descent, so there was some recovery time in there, but going downhill is harder on your body than going up, in some ways, because all of your joints are getting pounded on from the impact.

After the big climb and descent, it was somewhat flat for a while, but I was trying to conserve energy because I've heard the rolling hills at the end will do you in. And they do. Starting around mile 15 or so, there are these little .25 to .5 mile inclines that are nothing compared to Hurricane Point, but there's a lot of them, and they start to wear on you. They also decided it would be a really good idea to make the last .5 mile of the course a big incline, which is downright cruel. That one definitely hurt the most, so I was glad I had run conservatively.

The whole thing for me was that I wasn't trying to run it fast, I just wanted to see what all the hubbub about Big Sur was and use it as a good hard training run for San Francisco in July. So I finally finished (in 3:27) and was pretty tired at first, but not at all spent. I felt like I put out a good effort without killing myself; I was still fine walking around and was even able to run up and down stairs the next day.

Ok, angry section: the main thing was that they lost our sweats. Or rather, didn't lose them, but didn't get them to the finishing area until about two hours after I had finished. So as soon as I stopped running, of course I was freezing, because I was wearing short sleeves and shorts, it was 45 degrees out and I was all sweaty, and I had just, um, exerted myself just a tad. So I hobble over to get my sweats (which were positioned pretty far from the finish line, if you ask me) and they're not there!! "Oh," says the lady. "The truck got caught in traffic. They should be here by 2:00, for sure." This was at 10:00 a.m.! I'm shivering and clearly going to get hypothermia if I don't get warm dry clothes pretty soon. So she tells me to wait in the medical tent. This would've been okay, and most of the people in the medical tent were great, but this one really mean nurse kept trying to kick me out!! I was outraged. There was practically no one in there, I wasn't bothering anyone by standing huddled in the corner with a blanket, and if I had allowed her to kick me out, I really would've gotten hypothermic, and then she would've had a real medical emergency to deal with. Stupid, stupid woman!

Harrumph. So anyway, I eventually got my sweats and met up with Sara, who was hurting pretty bad but did a fantastic job and finished in around 4:15. That is really good for a first marathon, especially given the really rough conditions on such a difficult course! We eventually headed back to the hotel and got cleaned up, then walked very slowly back to Cannery Row (where all the shops are) and pigged out. Then we laid around in bed in the hotel and watched movies the rest of the day, and came home on Monday.

And that was my race! Like I said, I was glad I didn't go all out and glad I didn't do the full marathon, because I was totally recovered by Tuesday. I took Wednesday off of running too, just to make sure I got all those muscles repaired, but Thursday morning I did a good 7 miler with the dogs and right now I can't believe the race was only a week ago today. It feels so long ago! I guess because the whole thing was so surreal and my recovery was so fast.

So the verdict on Big Sur? Meh. It was beautiful, for sure. But it was also just 21 miles of the same beautifulness. The whole thing is literally right along the ocean, so while it's gorgeous, the scenery never really changes. It looked like what I think Ireland must look like; very green, rocky, and somewhat bleak and unforgiving. And I'm glad I did it. But maybe there's just too much hype surrounding it or the experience with my lost sweats soured it or something, but I don't feel the need to ever do it again. I'm glad I did it once, but once was enough.

I've been typing forever! I'll try to update with more non-race info this week. It's my last week of classes, and then I have to get all of my papers turned in, so it might be a bit crazy, but I'll try to talk to y'all soon.

Long Overdue

Holy moly, this post is way overdue! I can't believe it's been almost a month since I updated. Time is really flying.

Well. First and foremost, I promised Jimmy I would share these pictures with him, and they came out really good, so I'd like to share them with you, too. So last weekend, very impromptu, I went to Las Vegas to visit Jimmy. I was there from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, and we had a really good time! (Well, I did, at least. I hope he did too!) On Saturday, we drove out to Red Rock Canyon and I took these pictures. It was really beautiful and awesome and impressive.

It's such a foreign landscape to me, but just undeniably beautiful. It has that open, unending feel of central Illinois, but it's a touch more desolate and less welcoming, and the color palette is obviously quite different. A very, very cool experience that I highly recommend to anyone who visits Vegas - it's just outside the city!

After our drive, we went shopping and Jimmy bought me some new clothes! (He got himself a new case/cover for his iPhone, too, so it wasn't just about spoiling me.) I got some shorts, a really great skirt, two shirts, and a jacket! Did I mention how fantastic my brother is? We went out to a very nice dinner that night, then both slept in in the morning and I headed home on Sunday afternoon. It was really great to see him, even if just for a little while. I wish we could do it more often!

I didn't get any work done over the weekend (which was partially my own fault, since I could've tried a little harder to get some stuff done in the airport), so I've been pretty busy this week. It's also getting to that point in the semester where I need to start getting my final projects together... blah, I don't want to talk about this.

I am MUCH more excited about these things:

1) Big Sur Marathon in less than 10 days!!!

2) Waiting to hear back from two grants I applied for. One is from the Berkeley Center for Race and Gender to fund a project I want to do about how people perceive race and gender in speech. The other is a 3-year fellowship from the National Science Foundation that I probably won't get, but still might. Fingers crossed!

3) Running a pilot study for my cognitive linguistics class in the next two weeks.

4) Signing up for classes for next semester, and for classes at the Linguistics Institute being held at Berkeley this summer. This fall, I'm planning to take Field Methods (where we have a speaker of a weird language come in and we have to basically learn it from scratch), Advanced Cognitive Linguistics, and Cognitive Neuroscience. And if my Race and Gender grant comes through, I'll be taking an "independent study" with my adviser so I'll have time to work on that project. Fingers double-triple-quadruple crossed!

5) We found out today that we have 11 incoming first-years for the fall! (This post is a little heavy on the exclamation points, isn't it? !!?) My year is only 6 people, so it will be a little weird to have so many newbies running around, but I really liked the people I met at the prospective student visit, and it'll be very cool to have some new faces and personalities in the department.

I think that's all for now. Rye is barking his head off and I need to figure out a way to make him be quiet.