I thought that I should update you all on my no poo experiment, as it's been about three weeks since I started. I'm not posting pictures, though, as I personally don't see much of a difference and the lighting's not good in here anyway. So, without further delays on my part, my thoughts thus far:
I haven't really noticed much of a change. I know that's slightly underwhelming for most of my adoring public, but there you have it. To be honest, I had to check the date of my previous blog post on this matter to remember when I'd even started this experiment-it's been that normal to me.
The good:
-I haven't had to buy hair products at all in the past few weeks. This makes my wallet (or R's wallet) happy. And my corner of the shower, as it's less crowded.
-My showers are uber short, which is not only great for time but also for water conservation (which is important at the moment as we haven't had rain in weeks-although we're not under a water restriction it still seems like a good thing to do). I only have to do the baking soda-vinegar wash a couple of times a week, so the lack of hair washing means shorter showers.
-I don't feel like I'm constantly washing my hair. If I take a shower in the morning and then work out in the evening and shower again afterward, I don't feel like I'm over shampooing or conditioning, because I'm just rinsing.
-My hair is less tangled. This was a huge surprise to me-for whatever reason I thought that by not conditioning my hair every day it would be a huge tangled mess. This however is not the case. In fact-it's the opposite! I have so few tangles. It's great!
The bad:
-I miss the good smells of my shampoo. I don't mind the smell of vinegar, but mint is nicer.
-When I get to the wash day, it's pretty obvious my hair needs to be washed (at least to me), but not in a horrific way, just a kind of "she should wash her hair" way. But it's not too bad.
-My wet hair doesn't feel as soft as it did when I was conditioning, but there you go.
-I can't figure out the washcloth thing. Am I supposed to do this when my hair is dry or wet? The tip was to "brush" your hair with a damp washcloth 100 times, but I don't know if that's wet or dry hair. I don't know if it even makes a different. So I haven't been doing it.
All in all it's not been too bad. Every now and then when I'm running I get a whiff of vinegar, but it's not very strong or anything. The baking soda/vinegar rinse has worked surprisingly well and I definitely notice a difference after I wash my hair with this stuff. I'll probably keep this up for now. The real test will be if I get my hair cut short in late August before school (I usually get my hair cut chin-length once a year before school starts--then it's long enough to pull back by the spring but is down in the winter to keep me warm). I don't know how the frizz has really compared because I don't wear my hair down in the summer. I guess I'll have to figure that out...
In the meantime, the garden continues to grow (we have several cucumbers and strawberries and tomatoes in the works!), the cats just turned one, and I'm getting more and more excited about school. I found the backpack I want (finally-after thinking of several I found an Osprey that looks like it will be perfect) and yeah. That's about it. It's summer. And we have beer to bottle soon. And the World Cup final is Sunday. Woohoo!
Friday, July 09, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
From the Interstates to the Highways
I'm a big consumer of the country's interstate system...I think it's officially the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate System, recognizing that president's role in its creation. Regardless of its name, I've tended to use the interstate. Alot. Not only is it the most reasonable way to drive 1000 miles to Kentucky when visiting family, it's also one of the fastest ways for both R and I to get to work, albeit it in opposite directions. The tough part is that here in Massachusetts, the interstate we need to use has a toll on it in both directions. Incidentally, R and I both pay the same toll rate at different exits in different directions. But whatever.
The other day I was looking up some information on the automated toll system you can use (instead of paying cash you have a transponder and it automatically deducts from your account...and then deducts from your bank account when the balance gets low). Neither R nor I use this system, partially because we've never gotten around to getting the transponder, but I don't really like the idea of the state of Massachusetts taking money out of my bank account when the balance gets low...given my current financial situation (which plays into this post alot), that could have some overdraft consequences that I don't really want to think about.
What I found most interesting is that there is a state commuter tax deduction for those who use this transponder and commute to work, which both R and I do. As I was reading through the information on the deduction, I stopped and asked R how much he spends on tolls per year. He said about 550. Not five dollars and fifty cents, mind you, but five hundred and fifty dollars. I realized that by the end of this year I would have spent roughly the same. Whoa.
Let's do the math. My toll, if I take the interstate (which actually only takes me halfway to work, as the other half is on state highways), I pay 1.10 each way. If I'm going to UConn, it's .65 each way. Let's say I go to UConn 4 days a week, and Amherst 2...that comes to 9.60/week in tolls. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that I make this drive 52 weeks a year (which takes into account the fact that during school vacation I'll probably head into Amherst more often, where the toll is higher), I'd be paying 499.20 in tolls. Per year. Or to put it in a monthly perspective, that's 38.40/month. I don't know about you all, but for me that's a huge impact on my budget. I'm sure once school starts the impact would be less huge, but regardless of how much it hurts to pay that amount (or not, if you have a lot of money), 38.40/month, or 499.20 a year is a huge amount of money! That's part of a vacation right there! Or lots of good beer! Or many other things!
With that in mind, I've decided to stop taking the MassPike as much as possible. I don't want to spend that money on road improvements I never see (I will hand it to the state of New York, though, when I had to drive through the thruway crazy snow to my grandmother's funeral, those roads were incredibly clear and well-maintained. I didn't feel bad paying the money then).
But then I got to thinking of the other benefits to staying off the interstate. I don't have to deal with crazy numbers of semis-this is especially great considering the time I was run off the road by a semi into the emergency lane during the rain. This doesn't mean they're not on the state highways (they are), but chances that they'll be passing me and such are much more slim. Also, Massachusetts is a beautiful state. The state highways to work take me through really gorgeous scenery, and I can breathe in the summer air and just think. Not to mention that going slower is better on gas. I felt less harried when I get to work having taken a state highway route this morning, and it was nice. I hate trucks passing me mostly because I don't have AC so all four windows are rolled down and the trucks are so loud I have to cover that ear when they pass. This isn't really a problem on the state roads. I also get to experience seeing all sorts of random places along the road, such as new ice cream stands or farms or trails. I wouldn't see these things on the interstate. Oh and in the summer, traffic on Sundays heading home from work is pretty awful, usually slowing down to a standstill at points due to all of the folks coming back from their summer homes or whatever. The state highways tend to be less clogged.
The downsides are there, to be sure. It takes a bit longer-about 25 minutes more each way, which turns into 50 minutes total. That's a pretty decent chunk of time, but it's time I can spend in prayer, or just thinking, or singing along to the music, and enjoying God's creation. I'm less likely to do that when I'm dealing with interstate traffic.
So yeah. I'm sure there will be times when it's hard not to take the interstate, or times when I can't avoid it (I'll likely take the state highway halfway to UConn and then pickup the non-toll interstate when it begins), but for the most part I'm going to try to make a conscientious effort to stick to the highways, and bypass the interstate.
It's more interesting anyway.
The other day I was looking up some information on the automated toll system you can use (instead of paying cash you have a transponder and it automatically deducts from your account...and then deducts from your bank account when the balance gets low). Neither R nor I use this system, partially because we've never gotten around to getting the transponder, but I don't really like the idea of the state of Massachusetts taking money out of my bank account when the balance gets low...given my current financial situation (which plays into this post alot), that could have some overdraft consequences that I don't really want to think about.
What I found most interesting is that there is a state commuter tax deduction for those who use this transponder and commute to work, which both R and I do. As I was reading through the information on the deduction, I stopped and asked R how much he spends on tolls per year. He said about 550. Not five dollars and fifty cents, mind you, but five hundred and fifty dollars. I realized that by the end of this year I would have spent roughly the same. Whoa.
Let's do the math. My toll, if I take the interstate (which actually only takes me halfway to work, as the other half is on state highways), I pay 1.10 each way. If I'm going to UConn, it's .65 each way. Let's say I go to UConn 4 days a week, and Amherst 2...that comes to 9.60/week in tolls. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that I make this drive 52 weeks a year (which takes into account the fact that during school vacation I'll probably head into Amherst more often, where the toll is higher), I'd be paying 499.20 in tolls. Per year. Or to put it in a monthly perspective, that's 38.40/month. I don't know about you all, but for me that's a huge impact on my budget. I'm sure once school starts the impact would be less huge, but regardless of how much it hurts to pay that amount (or not, if you have a lot of money), 38.40/month, or 499.20 a year is a huge amount of money! That's part of a vacation right there! Or lots of good beer! Or many other things!
With that in mind, I've decided to stop taking the MassPike as much as possible. I don't want to spend that money on road improvements I never see (I will hand it to the state of New York, though, when I had to drive through the thruway crazy snow to my grandmother's funeral, those roads were incredibly clear and well-maintained. I didn't feel bad paying the money then).
But then I got to thinking of the other benefits to staying off the interstate. I don't have to deal with crazy numbers of semis-this is especially great considering the time I was run off the road by a semi into the emergency lane during the rain. This doesn't mean they're not on the state highways (they are), but chances that they'll be passing me and such are much more slim. Also, Massachusetts is a beautiful state. The state highways to work take me through really gorgeous scenery, and I can breathe in the summer air and just think. Not to mention that going slower is better on gas. I felt less harried when I get to work having taken a state highway route this morning, and it was nice. I hate trucks passing me mostly because I don't have AC so all four windows are rolled down and the trucks are so loud I have to cover that ear when they pass. This isn't really a problem on the state roads. I also get to experience seeing all sorts of random places along the road, such as new ice cream stands or farms or trails. I wouldn't see these things on the interstate. Oh and in the summer, traffic on Sundays heading home from work is pretty awful, usually slowing down to a standstill at points due to all of the folks coming back from their summer homes or whatever. The state highways tend to be less clogged.
The downsides are there, to be sure. It takes a bit longer-about 25 minutes more each way, which turns into 50 minutes total. That's a pretty decent chunk of time, but it's time I can spend in prayer, or just thinking, or singing along to the music, and enjoying God's creation. I'm less likely to do that when I'm dealing with interstate traffic.
So yeah. I'm sure there will be times when it's hard not to take the interstate, or times when I can't avoid it (I'll likely take the state highway halfway to UConn and then pickup the non-toll interstate when it begins), but for the most part I'm going to try to make a conscientious effort to stick to the highways, and bypass the interstate.
It's more interesting anyway.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Strangers
I've been thinking about strangers lately, in large part due to two recent experiences. The first involved my nephew. My sister, brother and I had taken B to the doctor for his 4 year check up, which included his various vaccinations and such as he's starting preschool in the fall (!!!). I have to admit it was a pretty fun to watch B interact with someone who's not family. I don't get to see this very often, and aside from the part where the nurse and my sister (who also happens to be a nurse) were holding B down so he'd actually get his shots, it was nice just to watch what happened. The doctor came in and started asking him questions, one of which was a series of questions about colors (I'm guessing to see if he's color blind), and other just general things. Then came the following conversation:
Doctor: If a stranger came up to you and wanted you to go with him, would you go?
B: (shakes his head no)
Doc: What if that stranger said he had some puppies to show you?
B: (shakes his head yes)
Doc: (Goes on to explain why we don't go with strangers even if they have puppies). So, would you go with the stranger who had puppies?
B: (shakes head no)
Doc: Good!
Now, to be fair, B just got a puppy for his birthday and puppies are pretty enticing. So that afternoon, while walking to the barber shop for a hair cut (for B), my brother and I talked with him about strangers and posed different scenarios-candy, puppies, etc.-and this time B had gotten the gist and said no every time.
That was experience one.
The second was on my way to work. The town in which I work tends to attract all sorts of folks, and I've found a much larger number of hitch hikers there than I would ever have expected. On the interstate heading in, I passed two women who looked to be about my age and a massive dog, with backpacks on hitchhiking down the interstate. I didn't stop. This struck me, though, because while you might see these folks on state highways around the town where I work, rarely does one see a couple of folks like this on the interstate (rarely do I see women hitchhiking at all, for that matter).
And it got me to thinking-where do we draw the line about strangers? These women needed a ride, and while I couldn't have fit all of them and their giant dog into my car, if I could have, would I have stopped? No. I wouldn't have. There are too many red flags that go up when I see a hitchhiker, regardless of who they are, all of which surround my own personal safety.
This in turn got me to thinking about the role of hospitality in our society, and how it compares to the role in earlier societies. In Jesus's time, for example, it was an essential part of the way things were. Or you could look at medieval England. Or any earlier place that didn't have our "modern conveniences" or whatever. Welcoming the stranger was essential to how society worked, and breaches of that hospitality (either on the part of the guest or host) were a huge deal.
So what would happen, I wonder, if Jesus were walking down the highway today? Do angels still function in the roles of hospitality in earlier times, or would they function in the ways we're more used to? If you could afford to put a stranger up in a hotel, would you do that or welcome them into your home? My guess is go for the hotel option. I'm not saying that in a judging way-I'd probably do the same thing-but there you go.
Sorry this post seems rather scattered. I haven't fully developed my thoughts on the matter, but I wanted to go ahead and write before I let them go away. And I have an allergy headache. And I need to do Welsh. And there's more World Cup football to watch.
So yeah. Hmm.
Doctor: If a stranger came up to you and wanted you to go with him, would you go?
B: (shakes his head no)
Doc: What if that stranger said he had some puppies to show you?
B: (shakes his head yes)
Doc: (Goes on to explain why we don't go with strangers even if they have puppies). So, would you go with the stranger who had puppies?
B: (shakes head no)
Doc: Good!
Now, to be fair, B just got a puppy for his birthday and puppies are pretty enticing. So that afternoon, while walking to the barber shop for a hair cut (for B), my brother and I talked with him about strangers and posed different scenarios-candy, puppies, etc.-and this time B had gotten the gist and said no every time.
That was experience one.
The second was on my way to work. The town in which I work tends to attract all sorts of folks, and I've found a much larger number of hitch hikers there than I would ever have expected. On the interstate heading in, I passed two women who looked to be about my age and a massive dog, with backpacks on hitchhiking down the interstate. I didn't stop. This struck me, though, because while you might see these folks on state highways around the town where I work, rarely does one see a couple of folks like this on the interstate (rarely do I see women hitchhiking at all, for that matter).
And it got me to thinking-where do we draw the line about strangers? These women needed a ride, and while I couldn't have fit all of them and their giant dog into my car, if I could have, would I have stopped? No. I wouldn't have. There are too many red flags that go up when I see a hitchhiker, regardless of who they are, all of which surround my own personal safety.
This in turn got me to thinking about the role of hospitality in our society, and how it compares to the role in earlier societies. In Jesus's time, for example, it was an essential part of the way things were. Or you could look at medieval England. Or any earlier place that didn't have our "modern conveniences" or whatever. Welcoming the stranger was essential to how society worked, and breaches of that hospitality (either on the part of the guest or host) were a huge deal.
So what would happen, I wonder, if Jesus were walking down the highway today? Do angels still function in the roles of hospitality in earlier times, or would they function in the ways we're more used to? If you could afford to put a stranger up in a hotel, would you do that or welcome them into your home? My guess is go for the hotel option. I'm not saying that in a judging way-I'd probably do the same thing-but there you go.
Sorry this post seems rather scattered. I haven't fully developed my thoughts on the matter, but I wanted to go ahead and write before I let them go away. And I have an allergy headache. And I need to do Welsh. And there's more World Cup football to watch.
So yeah. Hmm.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
No Poo
No poo. That's right. And I'm not talking about irregularities, as Maggie used to call that discussion at camp. I'm talking about redefining normal and getting rid of the shampoo. Here are my reasons:
1. Shampoo and conditioner are expensive, and it's money that's literally going down the drain.
2. These are full of chemicals that I would be putting on my skin. To find the stuff without chemicals you spend more money. Said money goes down the drain.
3. I try to work out every day, and usually do. However, I tend to sweat a lot when I work out and like to shower after said exercises. I felt like washing my hair twice a day was just too much-I didn't notice changes in my hair itself, but it just felt wrong.
4. In my reading up on this, I found out that shampoo wasn't really common until the early 20th century. That's right folks, it's only about 100 years old, and the shampoo most like what we use today didn't come around until 1930, meaning there are folks out there who predate shampoo.
5. Washing your hair strips it of natural oils. Then your body goes into overdrive to reproduce the oils that were taken out. So then your hair looks greasy and you wash it again.
This isn't some sort of crazy hippie routine (not that I have anything against crazy hippies). It's become more and more common from what I can tell. I tried making my own deodorant, but that didn't work out so well. I'm hoping to make my own laundry detergent once my current batch runs out. And I'm going to try the no poo routine now.
I've read what feels like a ton on this, and they pretty much seem to advocate similar methods, involving a baking soda wash for your scalp and an apple cider vinegar rinse for the rest of your hair (which you don't even have to do every day). Another method is to "comb" through your hair with a washcloth. I'm not sure how that works in a practical way, but it's supposed to spread the oils throughout your hair.
So I've started my experiment. I'll probably do the baking soda/vinegar thing tomorrow night, as I'm going to an ordination on Saturday and have church on Sunday (having a job that requires personal grooming skills and all), so we'll see how that turns out. I thought I'd include a few pictures in this post as well for your viewing pleasure.
Oh and apparently this is supposed to work even better on curly hair. I have curly hair that often turns frizzy, but this should get rid of the frizz (making me exponentially more likely to wear my hair down if it's less than 70 degrees outside) and maybe even make it curlier (a la what my hair looks like in the morning if I go to bed with it wet, i.e. fabulously curly until the frizz sets in). So here are the pics.
These are my materials. And no, I'm not washing my hair with ketchup (or catsup) and mustard, but I couldn't find clear bottles at the grocery store and forgot about the dollar store nearby until I'd already checked out. They were only 2.99 anyway. But I needed something to use for the baking soda wash and for the vinegar rinse. How much did this cost, you might ask? .99 for the baking soda (I splurged and got Arm & Hammer), 1.69 for the vinegar, and 2.99 for the bottles. That's it, folks. And this should last me for quite a while-longer than a .99 bottle of conditioner, that's for sure (considering that the ratio I've seen most often is only 1 tbsp of each to a cup of water). So this is what I have to start with.
Me in my glory. The shirt was tie dyed by R in college but he didn't like it. I think it's an amazing tie dye job and it's one of my favorite t shirts. It was in the Vanagon for a while as a spare until I came along and rescued it. But I digress...
This is me with my hair in it's usual longer state-up and in a pony tail because the frizziness makes me look like a triangle head and invites innumerable and infinite taunts from my brother and sister about it. So I throw it in a pony tail and get on with my day. I washed my hair yesterday morning, so I guess this is day 1 of no poo, with the hair up. I stuck my head in R's face and asked him to smell it. He said it smells like hair, so that's good. And I don't think it looks greasy, but I could be in denial. R had no comment on that one, so I'm suspicious...
And here's the hair down, having gone one day without shampoo. It's still a little damp from my shower earlier (I have really thick hair that some days never dries completely so this isn't a total surprise). Sorry the lighting's not better. I didn't even think to take these pics when it was still light outside, but I tried to get my desk lamp to shine on the hair so y'all could see it. It's definitely less frizzy and it feels a little dirty, but I think that's because I'm not used to not washing it. Anyway, here we go. This should be an adventure, but if it works (and I really hope it will) I imagine getting rid of shampoo will be so liberating!
These are a few of the many websites I looked at in this process, if you're interested:
One Green Generation (this is the website I found the homemade deodorant recipe on too)
This article in the Boston Phoenix
Naturally Curly (this one involves using conditioner and hair product, but I read it anyway)
Google (just search "no poo" and you're off!)
If any of you out there already do this and have tips, feel free to share! I'll keep y'all updated as this comes along.
1. Shampoo and conditioner are expensive, and it's money that's literally going down the drain.
2. These are full of chemicals that I would be putting on my skin. To find the stuff without chemicals you spend more money. Said money goes down the drain.
3. I try to work out every day, and usually do. However, I tend to sweat a lot when I work out and like to shower after said exercises. I felt like washing my hair twice a day was just too much-I didn't notice changes in my hair itself, but it just felt wrong.
4. In my reading up on this, I found out that shampoo wasn't really common until the early 20th century. That's right folks, it's only about 100 years old, and the shampoo most like what we use today didn't come around until 1930, meaning there are folks out there who predate shampoo.
5. Washing your hair strips it of natural oils. Then your body goes into overdrive to reproduce the oils that were taken out. So then your hair looks greasy and you wash it again.
This isn't some sort of crazy hippie routine (not that I have anything against crazy hippies). It's become more and more common from what I can tell. I tried making my own deodorant, but that didn't work out so well. I'm hoping to make my own laundry detergent once my current batch runs out. And I'm going to try the no poo routine now.
I've read what feels like a ton on this, and they pretty much seem to advocate similar methods, involving a baking soda wash for your scalp and an apple cider vinegar rinse for the rest of your hair (which you don't even have to do every day). Another method is to "comb" through your hair with a washcloth. I'm not sure how that works in a practical way, but it's supposed to spread the oils throughout your hair.
So I've started my experiment. I'll probably do the baking soda/vinegar thing tomorrow night, as I'm going to an ordination on Saturday and have church on Sunday (having a job that requires personal grooming skills and all), so we'll see how that turns out. I thought I'd include a few pictures in this post as well for your viewing pleasure.
Oh and apparently this is supposed to work even better on curly hair. I have curly hair that often turns frizzy, but this should get rid of the frizz (making me exponentially more likely to wear my hair down if it's less than 70 degrees outside) and maybe even make it curlier (a la what my hair looks like in the morning if I go to bed with it wet, i.e. fabulously curly until the frizz sets in). So here are the pics.
These are my materials. And no, I'm not washing my hair with ketchup (or catsup) and mustard, but I couldn't find clear bottles at the grocery store and forgot about the dollar store nearby until I'd already checked out. They were only 2.99 anyway. But I needed something to use for the baking soda wash and for the vinegar rinse. How much did this cost, you might ask? .99 for the baking soda (I splurged and got Arm & Hammer), 1.69 for the vinegar, and 2.99 for the bottles. That's it, folks. And this should last me for quite a while-longer than a .99 bottle of conditioner, that's for sure (considering that the ratio I've seen most often is only 1 tbsp of each to a cup of water). So this is what I have to start with.
Me in my glory. The shirt was tie dyed by R in college but he didn't like it. I think it's an amazing tie dye job and it's one of my favorite t shirts. It was in the Vanagon for a while as a spare until I came along and rescued it. But I digress...
This is me with my hair in it's usual longer state-up and in a pony tail because the frizziness makes me look like a triangle head and invites innumerable and infinite taunts from my brother and sister about it. So I throw it in a pony tail and get on with my day. I washed my hair yesterday morning, so I guess this is day 1 of no poo, with the hair up. I stuck my head in R's face and asked him to smell it. He said it smells like hair, so that's good. And I don't think it looks greasy, but I could be in denial. R had no comment on that one, so I'm suspicious...
And here's the hair down, having gone one day without shampoo. It's still a little damp from my shower earlier (I have really thick hair that some days never dries completely so this isn't a total surprise). Sorry the lighting's not better. I didn't even think to take these pics when it was still light outside, but I tried to get my desk lamp to shine on the hair so y'all could see it. It's definitely less frizzy and it feels a little dirty, but I think that's because I'm not used to not washing it. Anyway, here we go. This should be an adventure, but if it works (and I really hope it will) I imagine getting rid of shampoo will be so liberating!
These are a few of the many websites I looked at in this process, if you're interested:One Green Generation (this is the website I found the homemade deodorant recipe on too)
This article in the Boston Phoenix
Naturally Curly (this one involves using conditioner and hair product, but I read it anyway)
Google (just search "no poo" and you're off!)
If any of you out there already do this and have tips, feel free to share! I'll keep y'all updated as this comes along.
I've been remiss...
...about keeping this blog up to date. Sigh. One of these days I'll actually be good at this whole blogging thing, but in the mean time I thank you faithful readers who keep up with me anyway (namely, my Mom). I feel like I have lots to write about and nothing to write about at the same time...so we'll see how this goes. I'm going to save my garden for another post, hopefully one that I'll get up this afternoon (I want to take a few pictures of the garden today before I do that post though). So maybe we'll have 2 posts in one day!
Anyway here are a few random musings from my direction:
1. I realized that I never updated you all on the homemade deodorant campaign. It was a complete flop. The baking soda/cornstarch mix did keep the smell at bay, but it didn't last as long as my Tom's does and, to make matters worse, it dried out my underarms and made them irritated on top of the initial irritation. So I went back to my Tom's the minute I retrieved it from my office. I still haven't been able to find it in stores anymore (it seems to have been replaced by a roll on) but I'm going to Maine on Saturday for a friend's ordination and plan on stopping by the factory outlet store and stocking up on deodorant and toothpaste. Woot.
2. Medieval Welsh. I think I may have mentioned somewhere that I'm taking a medieval welsh reading course this summer. Well, it's not so much of a course as it is a bunch of people getting together to translate. It's going pretty well so far (I think). It involves lots of flipping through the vocabulary section, but such is life. It's also been a good way to get to know some people in the UConn community before school actually starts. I'm the only student in there who's straight up history (although my advisor is in the group as well), but still. Meeting people is good.
3. R and I got season passes to Six Flags. It's not too far from church and it's our entertainment budget for the summer. We've only been able to make it once so far, but we plan on going again this Sunday. It's not a huge theme park, but it's not bad. And for 50 bucks each we can go anytime we want through the end of October, so that's all good.
4. I'm currently starting some summer reading that's more school-oriented. There are a few books I'd like to get through before class starts, and on top of that I'm experimenting with a new way to read, so to speak. When I take generals in 2 years I don't want to have to reread everything, so I'm taking notes on each chapter as I read. It's more time consuming but I think it will pay off in the end when I'm researching for the orals and for the dissertation. This way I'll know where to flip when I need particular information. The only downside is that I have to have my computer with me when I'm reading (I can take the notes by hand but that's even more time consuming). This method is similar to what I did in the fall while I was applying to programs-I'd read books by the folks with whom I wanted to study and take notes along the way. So we'll see how this goes.
5. I'm seriously considering going "no poo," which is the short term for not using shampoo. The more I read about the chemicals in that stuff, the more ridiculous it seems to me that we put it on our scalp, mere inches away from our brains. Not to mention that cosmetics are expensive. The no poo method will take a little getting used to and experimentation (some folks use a baking soda wash and apple cider vinegar rinse, others use nothing), but I'll keep everyone updated. It seems that it works best for the folks with curly hair, so there's a win! I just hope it doesn't look overly greasy, particularly for church on Sunday. I have to look presentable and all that...but it would be great not to have the extra expense of shampoo. And apparently when you stop using it and your hair has started to reproduce the natural oils that protect it, you have softer hair that's less frizzy (oh I can't wait!). So woot. Not to mention that people didn't actually start shampooing their hair until the 20th century. Before that it was just rinsing.
It sounds weird, I realize, but I did find a phrase that captured this for me. It's called "redefining normal." Today, not using shampoo is not normal because that's what society tells us is not normal (even though it didn't become normal until the early 20th century). So I just have to redefine my own normal and off we go.
6. R and I went to a local farm last Saturday and picked some strawberries, as well as bought some veggies. I swear these are the best strawberries I've ever had-absolutely amazing! I hope the ones in our garden bear fruit, literally. I hope next summer we can do CSA at a local farm. I think the cost ends up being about the same in basic how much we spend terms, but the environmental cost is so much lower that if we can afford it, I hope we can do it. That will have to wait until next year though.
OK well, that's enough randomness for now. I'll get some pics of the garden and update you all on that later, especially as we've tried something new this year (well, a couple of new things).
Anyway here are a few random musings from my direction:
1. I realized that I never updated you all on the homemade deodorant campaign. It was a complete flop. The baking soda/cornstarch mix did keep the smell at bay, but it didn't last as long as my Tom's does and, to make matters worse, it dried out my underarms and made them irritated on top of the initial irritation. So I went back to my Tom's the minute I retrieved it from my office. I still haven't been able to find it in stores anymore (it seems to have been replaced by a roll on) but I'm going to Maine on Saturday for a friend's ordination and plan on stopping by the factory outlet store and stocking up on deodorant and toothpaste. Woot.
2. Medieval Welsh. I think I may have mentioned somewhere that I'm taking a medieval welsh reading course this summer. Well, it's not so much of a course as it is a bunch of people getting together to translate. It's going pretty well so far (I think). It involves lots of flipping through the vocabulary section, but such is life. It's also been a good way to get to know some people in the UConn community before school actually starts. I'm the only student in there who's straight up history (although my advisor is in the group as well), but still. Meeting people is good.
3. R and I got season passes to Six Flags. It's not too far from church and it's our entertainment budget for the summer. We've only been able to make it once so far, but we plan on going again this Sunday. It's not a huge theme park, but it's not bad. And for 50 bucks each we can go anytime we want through the end of October, so that's all good.
4. I'm currently starting some summer reading that's more school-oriented. There are a few books I'd like to get through before class starts, and on top of that I'm experimenting with a new way to read, so to speak. When I take generals in 2 years I don't want to have to reread everything, so I'm taking notes on each chapter as I read. It's more time consuming but I think it will pay off in the end when I'm researching for the orals and for the dissertation. This way I'll know where to flip when I need particular information. The only downside is that I have to have my computer with me when I'm reading (I can take the notes by hand but that's even more time consuming). This method is similar to what I did in the fall while I was applying to programs-I'd read books by the folks with whom I wanted to study and take notes along the way. So we'll see how this goes.
5. I'm seriously considering going "no poo," which is the short term for not using shampoo. The more I read about the chemicals in that stuff, the more ridiculous it seems to me that we put it on our scalp, mere inches away from our brains. Not to mention that cosmetics are expensive. The no poo method will take a little getting used to and experimentation (some folks use a baking soda wash and apple cider vinegar rinse, others use nothing), but I'll keep everyone updated. It seems that it works best for the folks with curly hair, so there's a win! I just hope it doesn't look overly greasy, particularly for church on Sunday. I have to look presentable and all that...but it would be great not to have the extra expense of shampoo. And apparently when you stop using it and your hair has started to reproduce the natural oils that protect it, you have softer hair that's less frizzy (oh I can't wait!). So woot. Not to mention that people didn't actually start shampooing their hair until the 20th century. Before that it was just rinsing.
It sounds weird, I realize, but I did find a phrase that captured this for me. It's called "redefining normal." Today, not using shampoo is not normal because that's what society tells us is not normal (even though it didn't become normal until the early 20th century). So I just have to redefine my own normal and off we go.
6. R and I went to a local farm last Saturday and picked some strawberries, as well as bought some veggies. I swear these are the best strawberries I've ever had-absolutely amazing! I hope the ones in our garden bear fruit, literally. I hope next summer we can do CSA at a local farm. I think the cost ends up being about the same in basic how much we spend terms, but the environmental cost is so much lower that if we can afford it, I hope we can do it. That will have to wait until next year though.
OK well, that's enough randomness for now. I'll get some pics of the garden and update you all on that later, especially as we've tried something new this year (well, a couple of new things).
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Grand Canyon and Other Things
These are just a couple of pictures from my recent trip to the Grand Canyon with Team in Training. It was an amazing experience--one that I can't fully put in to words. The hike was awesome-having done it I can't imagine visiting the Grand Canyon and not going below the rim, but people do it. 99% of visitors do that, as a matter of fact. So there you go. Oh and there are no color filters on these pictures-I just snapped and went. So the blues really are that blue, etc.In other news, I'm taking Middle Welsh this summer. It's a reading group of some students and professors at UConn, and my advisor emailed asking if I'd like to join in. So I figured, why not? It's a chance to meet some new people and get my head in the game for the fall. This last Monday was the first meeting, and it went pretty well on my end, I though. The main hang-up is that most everyone there, from what I can tell, has had some sort of Irish and they keep comparing the Welsh to that. This is all fine and dandy, but as I haven't had Irish I end up tuning out a bit on those points.
R and I worked on the garden last weekend. I'm hoping to upload some photos of that at a later date. We're doing raised bed gardening this year, and he and I built the beds together. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I got poison ivy YET AGAIN. I don't know why they don't call it Satan's weed, as that's what it is. It's all over my arms and my face this time. Ugh. And I got some sort of crazy bug bite-infection thing that requires 10 days of antibiotics. Ugh again.
Oh well. Gizmo just fell on an old flourescent light in the office in a place he can get in but not out. He was freaking out, but luckily he's ok and I'm ok and everything's cleaned up. Woot.
That's all for now. I've got to preach Trinity Sunday, so I need to solidify my thoughts about this one. And do some Welsh. And try not to scratch.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Awesome. Awesome to the Max.
I don't usually cry at news articles. I'll cry at movies no problem, and usually cry at books as well (I'm a huge cry-baby, it's just that most people don't know it). But this article had me all misty-eyed. People are amazing. Read it and weep. Literally.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Pardon the Smell...
I'm a sweat-er. No, not a warm woolly jumper, but a person who sweats. Part of it may be that I grew up in a humid climate where the summer weather report is consistently "hazy, hot, and humid." Part of it is also that I'm just made that way. Sweaty Betty, as my brother likes to say. There was a time when this might have embarrassed me, and I'll admit that I avoid certain color long sleeve Oxford button downs because I know it will be apparent I'm sweating, but for the most part I'm over it. Whatever. It's how God made me, and that's that.
Anti-perspirant would seem to be the obvious answer to sweating, and from about ages 12-21 that's what I used. I found out later my brother and dad couldn't use it because they're allergic, but I never had a problem, until my senior year of college. I broke out under my arms and it suuuccckkked. It's bad enough having a rash anywhere, but under your arms is ridiculously painful and annoying. Knowing the men in my family were allergic to anti-perspirants, I figured the same was true for me. I looked for women's plain deodorant, and it was impossible to find! I'm not sure what companies even make it. I did wear men's deoderant for a while (Speed Stick, usually), but to be honest I don't like walking around smelling like a man. The first time I said this to R, his response was "What, you don't like smelling like sweat and engine oil?" Ha. No dear, I don't.
Anyway I switched to Tom's of Maine. Then Tom's changed their formula to this long lasting protection thing, so I switched to Arm and Hammer, which caused me to break out as well. Then I found Tom's sensitive skin deodorant, and that has been my solution thus far. However, I'm finding it increasingly hard to find (for example, the Tom's website says that my local Target carries it-which they usually have in the past-but when I stopped by today it's been replaced by the new Tom's roll-on deodorants). I hate that it's harder to find, because the stuff really works for me. I broke out last summer before the wedding (about a month before-luckily it was gone by wedding time!) because I couldn't find it. And like a doofus, I left my workout bag at work last night, in which I had put my brush and deodorant, not realizing until I got home that it was in my office (1.5 hours away) and not in my car, so I didn't have it at home. I had an old stick of Tom's I'd never used, but it was the long lasting stuff. I put it on, not wanting to be smelly, and within 10 minutes it was burning. LAME. As I won't be in the office again until Sunday, I went to Target to look for some more, and well, I just talked about that.
So. What to do? I could order it online, or make a trip 2 hours north to the outlet store in Maine. It may end up coming to that, but it's not cheap. Running around 4.50 a stick, buying in bulk isn't really an option. My solution? I'm going to enter the world of make your own deodorant. I've found one simple recipe that's 1 part baking soda to 6 parts corn starch, and I'm going to start with that. I've recently developed a sensitivity to some natural fragrances (like lavender, which is too bad because I love the smell of lavender! The Trader Joe's laundry detergent made my clothes smell sooooo good. Oh well), and have been using unscented Tom's for a while, so I'm not worried about the lack of fragrance. Besides, no one's sticking their nose in my armpit so there's nothing to worry about that. I'll let you know how it goes. If it works, this will be awesome, as baking soda and corn starch are super cheap and super natural-not containing the crazy chemicals in so many deodorants.
I'm also contemplating making my own shampoo. I'm just tired of paying so much for something that literally goes down the drain. So far I haven't found anything that seems like it will work on thick, curly hair. If you know of anything good, point me in that direction!
In the mean time, pardon me if I smell a little funny. I'm trying to figure this whole home-made thing out...
Anti-perspirant would seem to be the obvious answer to sweating, and from about ages 12-21 that's what I used. I found out later my brother and dad couldn't use it because they're allergic, but I never had a problem, until my senior year of college. I broke out under my arms and it suuuccckkked. It's bad enough having a rash anywhere, but under your arms is ridiculously painful and annoying. Knowing the men in my family were allergic to anti-perspirants, I figured the same was true for me. I looked for women's plain deodorant, and it was impossible to find! I'm not sure what companies even make it. I did wear men's deoderant for a while (Speed Stick, usually), but to be honest I don't like walking around smelling like a man. The first time I said this to R, his response was "What, you don't like smelling like sweat and engine oil?" Ha. No dear, I don't.
Anyway I switched to Tom's of Maine. Then Tom's changed their formula to this long lasting protection thing, so I switched to Arm and Hammer, which caused me to break out as well. Then I found Tom's sensitive skin deodorant, and that has been my solution thus far. However, I'm finding it increasingly hard to find (for example, the Tom's website says that my local Target carries it-which they usually have in the past-but when I stopped by today it's been replaced by the new Tom's roll-on deodorants). I hate that it's harder to find, because the stuff really works for me. I broke out last summer before the wedding (about a month before-luckily it was gone by wedding time!) because I couldn't find it. And like a doofus, I left my workout bag at work last night, in which I had put my brush and deodorant, not realizing until I got home that it was in my office (1.5 hours away) and not in my car, so I didn't have it at home. I had an old stick of Tom's I'd never used, but it was the long lasting stuff. I put it on, not wanting to be smelly, and within 10 minutes it was burning. LAME. As I won't be in the office again until Sunday, I went to Target to look for some more, and well, I just talked about that.
So. What to do? I could order it online, or make a trip 2 hours north to the outlet store in Maine. It may end up coming to that, but it's not cheap. Running around 4.50 a stick, buying in bulk isn't really an option. My solution? I'm going to enter the world of make your own deodorant. I've found one simple recipe that's 1 part baking soda to 6 parts corn starch, and I'm going to start with that. I've recently developed a sensitivity to some natural fragrances (like lavender, which is too bad because I love the smell of lavender! The Trader Joe's laundry detergent made my clothes smell sooooo good. Oh well), and have been using unscented Tom's for a while, so I'm not worried about the lack of fragrance. Besides, no one's sticking their nose in my armpit so there's nothing to worry about that. I'll let you know how it goes. If it works, this will be awesome, as baking soda and corn starch are super cheap and super natural-not containing the crazy chemicals in so many deodorants.
I'm also contemplating making my own shampoo. I'm just tired of paying so much for something that literally goes down the drain. So far I haven't found anything that seems like it will work on thick, curly hair. If you know of anything good, point me in that direction!
In the mean time, pardon me if I smell a little funny. I'm trying to figure this whole home-made thing out...
Saturday, April 24, 2010
9 Months Later.
No, I'm not talking about a pregnancy. And no, I'm not talking about 9 months since our wedding, although that was 9 months ago, which is hard to believe. I'm talking about our kittens. I was scrolling through some old blog posts recently, and came upon these two pictures:
I found the post particularly funny because in the comments, my mom pointed out how big they had gotten. I agreed, noting they were twice as big as they had been after their first vet appointment. Talk about perspective, though, as the kittens look much more like cats now. R was home recently and has a better sense of their size relative to full grown cats (his parents have two), but I keep looking at our little ones and realizing they've gotten so big! Case in point:
This is our "little" kitten Leela. I only call her little because she's so much smaller than her brother, Gizmo. Sometimes I wonder if she was the runt of the litter or if it's just that she's female and is therefore smaller. Personality-wise, she's much the same as she was as a small kitten, with a few surprises. She still doesn't like to be picked up and held, usually only standing such treatment for mere seconds before she vaults out of your arms and runs off. She's also much more of a hunter than Gizmo, who still attacks his toys right away while Leela waits and watches before going in. She's the acrobat of the two-we got a new weight machine recently and Leela climbs to the top "with the greatest of ease," seeming to pay no mind to the fact that she's eight feet in the air and balancing on a wire. I'm telling you, this kitten has a pair! She's fearless-turn on the vacuum and she still doesn't run off. I was cleaning house a couple of weeks ago and was cleaning the floor after having vacuumed. Gizmo was hiding under my desk for the entire morning, while Leela came to see what was going on in the cleaning department.The big surprise with Leela, at least for me, is how much of a cuddlebug she is. This wasn't the case when she was smaller-she would often be off doing her own thing and maybe come sit with us, but Giz was the one doing all of the purring and snuggling. I'm not sure when this happened, but now Leela is the cat more likely to come snuggle-she's particularly fond of sitting on my lap (or R's) when we're watching TV and falling asleep. It's the sweetest thing (well, that and her yawns and stretches). She's also the shedder of the two. I expected Gizmo to be the one shedding hair everywhere, but it turns out I was wrong. No matter how many times I brush my girl, she always has several brushes full of hair to offer.
The biggest surprise, however, has been her recent decision to start rolling over on her back. I didn't know this, but R tells me that when cats do this it's a sign of trust. Leela has often been the "kneader" of the two-coming up to me when I'm lying on the couch reading and kneading my stomach while she purrs. I read online this is something kittens do with their mothers, so I guess that's good. But turning on their backs is supposed to be a big sign of trust, because it puts the cat in a completely vulnerable position. Gizmo has always been ok with this-I have pictures of the day we brought him home when I've got him lying on his back on my lap while I scratched his belly. He's recently started doing this funny flip-turn-upside-down thing and lying on his back while curling into an apostrophe for me to scratch his belly. But Leela has never let us do anything like this-when I hold her, it's never on her back. She hates that. But in the past couple of weeks she's started coming over to me on the couch, lying on her back, and waiting for tummy scratches. It makes my heart melt, for serious. The picture above is from one such tummy session (you can also kind of see the white patch on her stomach that she and her brother share). I would never have expected Leela to come and lay down for some tummy rubs, but she's full of surprises. She's the sweetie of the two.
Then there's our handsome boy Gizmo, who has started sitting like this lately. I guess it's a boy cat thing, but I think it's absolutely hilarious. I think he's actually much more similar to his little kitten self than his sister. He's very want-y, as R likes to put it (that's a reference to The Tick, for those who don't know). He's often found sitting by my side, jumping up and nipping at my elbow because he wants attention. This would be a whole lot cuter if his teeth weren't so sharp! He's also the loudest cat I've ever known-he still purrs often and loudly (again, Diesel would have been a good name). You just have to say his name and he's off. I guess this is a good thing, because it means he's happy. He's also a meow-er. Leela just chirps-I think I've only heard her meow once. But Gizmo will meow all of the time-and not at birds or things he sees outside of the window, but at his people. If I get home from work and go in the bedroom (where the kittens are not allowed), he'll sit outside of the door and meow until I come out to keep him company. He's also taken to meowing around 5:30 in the evenings, which is a full hour before they get their dinner. R thinks he picked this up from his parents' male cat, and Gizmo seems to think that being annoying for an hour is going to get him fed sooner. I don't know if he'll ever figure out that this method is not going to work. Probably not, but hope springs eternal, as the saying goes (in this case for Giz, that he'll get fed earlier, for me that he'll stop nipping at my elbows and crying for food for an hour). What's especially funny about his food begging is that he still has dry food in his bowl. We give them wet food in the evening, and so it's not that he's hungry really, just that he wants the good stuff.The big change with Gizmo is that lately he's taken to snuggling with us less when we're watching TV or just sitting in the living room. He's content to be in the same room and sitting close by, he just doesn't necessarily want to be a lap cat. He'll literally follow R around when he gets home, and when R goes into his office to do some work, Gizmo will curl up on the floor and just sit near him. He's also extremely fond of a shoebox that sits in front of the window in the office, and I'll pull up the shade for the kittens to look out. Gizmo will curl up and sleep on the box. It's friggin' adorable (he's doing it right now, actually!).
They're both window cats. Leela has torn off bits of one of the blinds where they've gotten in her way. We'll replace those eventually, but she'll probably just tear them up again. They don't snuggle together as much anymore, but R thinks this is teenage angst and they'll go back to it (right now when they're in the bed together they start wrestling).
They're great pets, and we're both smitten with them. I've found myself at times really looking forward to getting home so that I can sit on the couch, read, and hang out with the kittens. They love it when I play the Wii, although Leela always tries to sit on my lap at those moments, which is particularly awkward when trying to wield a light saber. But such is life.
Anyway I just thought I'd post an update on our babies. They're awesome and hilarious and cute. Now it's time to do car/yard/house work before the rain sets in for several days.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Movie Review: The Young Victoria
I'm a sucker for a few things in life, one of which is romance and the other is history as its presented in popular culture. For example, I once wrote a paper examining the historicity of "The Archbishop" episode of Blackadder. Needless to say, it was a fun paper to write (and it got an A). I'm tickled when I watch The Tudors. So when I found myself walking past Redbox today at the grocery store and seeing that The Young Victoria was out on DVD, I jumped at the chance to see it (I had wanted to see it in theaters in the fall, but never got the chance). Knowing that R would most likely not want to watch this movie, Friday afternoon seemed like the perfect time to delve into the past.I should be up front and say, however, that I haven't studied too much of Victorian Britain. My study of British history goes until about 1689--I can go to 1700 if you push it, but after that I'm lost. Between Henry VIII and James II I can rattle off monarchs and their reigns, etc., but before and after that things get a little hairy for me. Such is specialization. I was interested in seeing this movie, though, because I don't know much about Victoria and what little I do know involves her deep love for Prince Albert. Indeed, my popular culture knowledge of Victoria and Albert has been limited to their portrayal by Jim Broadbent (who, incidentally, portrays William IV in The Young Victoria) and Miriam Margolyes as Queen Victoria (another interesting tidbit-Miranda Richardson who plays Queenie in Blackadder Season 2 is the Duchess of Kent in The Young Victoria). So what did I think?
I loved this movie. I found it engaging and visually stunning (and I don't usually get excited about walking around old Victorian houses to look at couches). I think most folks think of Victoria as an older woman dressed in black, and of a society steeped in the Victorian "morality code," so to speak. This movie shows Victoria as a young woman as she steps into her role as Queen of England. The "bad guy" of the movie, John Clayborn, is made out to be positively evil. I mean, I really loathed this guy as I watched the movie, and he never does anything to redeem himself. The mother (Miranda Richardson) shows a more complex figure, one who seems to be in the pocket of Clayborn but at other times looks for reconciliation with her daughter. The Baroness and Victoria's relationship with her could, I think, have been brought out more, particularly as her eventual dismissal is a pivotal point in the early marriage of Victoria and Albert. What's very intriguing about Victoria in this movie, now that I think about it, is her isolation. We see her growing relationship with Albert, but she has no friends to speak of.
The story of the love between Albert and Victoria serves as the focal point of the film and is so beautiful. I had a smile on my face every time they were together. Rupert Friend and Emily Blunt did an amazing job portraying the young couple, and I was entranced as I watched the independent, headstrong young queen fall for the soft spoken prince.
The only real downside I found to the movie was a slight emptiness after the wedding. We do see the couple start to figure out how this marriage thing is going to work, but at that point there's only about 20 minutes left in the movie and I was left wondering where they were going to go. I think this movie could have done with another 30 minutes or more of post-wedding development. Then we could see how Albert figured out what his role would be, and how they emerged as the power couple they would be. Apparently the assassination attempt at the end is historically inaccurate, but as I didn't really know about it beforehand that didn't bother me too much. I guess now that I know, I would prefer that it had been more truthful but I'm not going to raise a stink about it.
One hint: read the Wikipedia entry for Victoria (or some other easy access short overview of her) before watching the movie. I paused a couple of times to read through the entry so that I would know who was who. Maybe that's just because I'm an American so I don't have all of this royalty business figured out (for example, Victoria was heiress to the crown after her uncle William IV, as opposed to her father). It helped me just get a general overview of things so that I could focus on the story.
Overall? Watch it if you love history, or if you love love stories (or both). It's a great film and definitely worth your time. The score is also wonderful-any excuse to listen to Handel's Zadok the Priest several times is a good one in my opinion!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Resurrectional Realities
I was finally able to figure out how to cut and paste from Word into the blog (I used to be able to do it, and then something changed to prevent me from doing so. Tip: if you're a Mac user and want to cut and paste from Word, paste into the "Edit HTML" option on your dashboard and that should solve the problem). So here's my sermon from this past Sunday. Revised Common Lectionary Year C, Easter 3.
“God of Glory, by the raising of your Son you have broken the chains of death and hell; fill your Church with faith and hope; for a new day has dawned and the way of life stands open in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.” Common Worship collect for Easter Day
Things were definitely different. This is the feeling I get when reading today’s Gospel lesson from John. Things were different—but how different was still to be figured out. In the resurrection appearances from Jesus that John describes, we get curious details about time that I hadn’t really noticed before these past few weeks. Jesus’s first appearance is to Mary Magdalene “early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark” (20:1). He then appears to the disciples “when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week” (20:19). As we heard last week, Thomas isn’t around and when he comes back to the group and they tell him Jesus has shown up, he won’t believe them. Then we are told “A week later the disciples were again in the house” (20:26). And finally, today we begin the Gospel reading with “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias” (also known as the Sea of Galilee) (21:1).
So we have a full day between when Mary sees Jesus and when the disciples see him, a full week after that before Thomas sees Jesus (a week in which we assume the disciples were still in Jerusalem), and then “after these things,” an unknown amount of time when the disciples returned to Galilee. If you look at a map of the area, you would see that Bethsaida (where Peter, Andrew, and Philip were from) is not close to Jerusalem—in the geography of John’s Gospel, Jerusalem is about as far south as Jesus goes, while Bethsaida is about as far north. We’re encompassing the whole area Jesus travels in this Gospel by going from Jerusalem to Galilee. If we go back to the beginning of John’s Gospel, we find that the disciples were from areas around the Sea of Galilee (1:44). This means that at some point they decided it was time to return home.
I’m fascinated by these gaps in time—the gospel writer felt it was important to record them, yet we have no idea what goes on during these breaks. When Jesus was around, I imagine they were spending time with their teacher, learning and praying and talking and doing a lot of walking. But after Jesus’s horrific death and wondrous resurrection, the conversation must have changed. However, Jesus wasn’t around for these gaps in time—the details in the story come when Jesus is interacting with his disciples, and then he disappears again and we get the time gaps.
Here’s the question I’ve been pondering: what made the disciples decide it was time to go back to Galilee? They knew Jesus was resurrected—Thomas even believed by this point in time. We don’t have a record of Jesus telling the disciples to go home. At the end of last week’s reading, we get a short message from Jesus: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” and then the gospel writer tells us “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book” (20:29-30). So maybe he did tell them to go home, but my guess is that this was a decision the disciples came to on their own.
Most likely they weren’t really sure what else to do so they went home—but they continued to stay together as a group. Peter decides to go fishing—a fairly normal activity, it seems, even though John’s gospel never actually calls the disciples fishermen. They know enough, though, to go fishing at night, which I found out was actually the best time to fish on that part of the Sea of Galilee. They don’t have much luck, until Jesus shows up. New Testament scholar Raymond Brown points out that the disciples never catch a fish in the Gospels without Jesus’s help. Apparently some things have stayed the same.
So here are these disciples who know that Jesus is resurrected, yet they don’t know what to do with that information so they go back home and take up a normal activity. I’m not sure if they knew Jesus was even going to show up again, as Peter is extremely excited when they figure out it’s Jesus on the shore, and he swims 100 yards in to see him. And, as our collect for today says, Jesus makes himself known in the breaking of bread—in sharing a meal, which is something the disciples did quite often with their teacher.
All of this seems to be building up to something, but what? I’d never thought about it before, but there’s a real sense of being lost on the part of the disciples. They have no idea how life as we know it has changed now that Jesus is resurrected. Everything looks the same, tastes the same, sounds the same, and maybe even feels the same. But the fundamental underpinning of life—namely, death—had been completely overturned. Jesus defeated death. Death does not have the ultimate hold on our lives anymore. But what does this even mean?
We begin to get a glimpse of what it might mean for us in Jesus’s conversation with Peter. This is the only one-on-one conversation we get between these two in John after Peter’s denial of Christ. Jesus approaches Peter and calls him “Simon, son of John,” the exact same title he used when meeting Peter for the first time. Raymond Brown says this return to a formal address signals a possible challenge to the friendship between Jesus and Peter. And then Jesus goes a step further—he says Peter, do you love me? I can only imagine the incredible pain, sadness, and longing that took over this apostle as the one he denied looks him in the face and says, “do you love me?” This is the point of Peter’s deepest shame. His past actions would make the answer seem that it was no. He claimed he would lay down his life for Jesus and would follow him, and when the moment to do so came, he turned away and denied him (13:36-38). And now Jesus has to bring it back up again—there’s no “forgive and forget” here. To make things even worse Jesus asks the question three times, not only mirroring the three denials of Peter but also frustrating Peter as he tries to make Jesus know that he does indeed love him.
This conversation can show us how the resurrection changes everything in our lives. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes in his book, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, about how our normal interactions are based on the relationship of oppressor and oppressed. For all of us, we are a complex mix of people who oppress others and people who are oppressed by others and ourselves. This model of persecutor/victim or oppressor/oppressed is with us from the very beginning—before we even have a chance to understand it fully. There has only been one pure victim in history, one person who could make the choice to oppress and did not, one victim who fully understood the system—one who was not an oppressor but was only oppressed. That person is Jesus. In the conversation with Peter, we see the pure victim facing one of his closest friends, and one who oppressed him through denial. Peter is ashamed, and understandably so. I’m ashamed of myself when I hurt my friends and family—the thought of having to face that shame with Christ is almost agonizing. The reason for this is that I’m stuck in that idea of oppressor/oppressed. I’m functioning in an out-dated model, because the resurrection allows us to transcend the victim/persecutor relationship! It has been completely transformed. This does not mean that we “forgive and forget.” Rather, Williams writes that the transformation of our relationships is built upon our histories—even those that involve oppression, shame, and guilt (12). The real beauty of this is that our pasts and presents are not final. They are not the last word. The resurrection-JESUS-is the last Word!
Let’s think about this for a moment. Peter is the oppressor, and in today’s Gospel we see him speaking with Jesus one-on-one after his Resurrection. He faces his victim head on as Jesus ask,s “do you love me?” Peter is upset; Jesus has brought up the lowest thing he’s ever done, the most violent oppression he’s likely ever committed, and Peter has to answer. He doesn’t know how the resurrection has changed everything yet, and is stuck in the model of victim/persecutor, and all that comes with those relationships. Will Jesus be angry? Get even? Judge him? Berate him? But the resurrection transcends all of that—Jesus builds from Peter’s past and opens a place for the Gospel to take hold. What I find even more marvelous about this is that it’s not a one and done thing—it’s a process. “Feed.” “Tend.” “Follow.” These are verbs requiring continuous action.
The resurrection is for us a transformative process as it was for Peter, and as we heard today it would be for Paul as well. Jesus’s defeat of death in the resurrection changed everything about human existence—we are no longer tied to relationships based on oppression and a desperate struggle for life. Rather, we can transcend that and recognize the face of the risen Christ in one another and treat each other as such. We don’t have to fight against death anymore-Jesus already did that and won. We are called, instead, to live out a resurrectional reality in which we uphold Christ in one another, and overcome the bonds of this world that seek to drag us down, instead recognizing our bonds as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is part of the reason we renew our baptismal vows at the Great Vigil of Easter—to remind us that in the resurrection of Jesus “we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever,” and what that commitment means. That mark that is put on our foreheads in baptism is something that no one can take away—even those with whom we disagree deeply. The mark of baptism overcomes our human fickleness, anxieties, and jealousies, and instead is a mark of the resurrection. We are sealed as people of the resurrection. The challenge for us now is to live that way. For Peter and Paul, their resurrectional realities would take them throughout the Mediterranean world, proclaiming the Good News. Where will it take us?
“God of Glory, by the raising of your Son you have broken the chains of death and hell; fill your Church with faith and hope; for a new day has dawned and the way of life stands open in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.” Common Worship collect for Easter Day
Things were definitely different. This is the feeling I get when reading today’s Gospel lesson from John. Things were different—but how different was still to be figured out. In the resurrection appearances from Jesus that John describes, we get curious details about time that I hadn’t really noticed before these past few weeks. Jesus’s first appearance is to Mary Magdalene “early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark” (20:1). He then appears to the disciples “when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week” (20:19). As we heard last week, Thomas isn’t around and when he comes back to the group and they tell him Jesus has shown up, he won’t believe them. Then we are told “A week later the disciples were again in the house” (20:26). And finally, today we begin the Gospel reading with “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias” (also known as the Sea of Galilee) (21:1).
So we have a full day between when Mary sees Jesus and when the disciples see him, a full week after that before Thomas sees Jesus (a week in which we assume the disciples were still in Jerusalem), and then “after these things,” an unknown amount of time when the disciples returned to Galilee. If you look at a map of the area, you would see that Bethsaida (where Peter, Andrew, and Philip were from) is not close to Jerusalem—in the geography of John’s Gospel, Jerusalem is about as far south as Jesus goes, while Bethsaida is about as far north. We’re encompassing the whole area Jesus travels in this Gospel by going from Jerusalem to Galilee. If we go back to the beginning of John’s Gospel, we find that the disciples were from areas around the Sea of Galilee (1:44). This means that at some point they decided it was time to return home.
I’m fascinated by these gaps in time—the gospel writer felt it was important to record them, yet we have no idea what goes on during these breaks. When Jesus was around, I imagine they were spending time with their teacher, learning and praying and talking and doing a lot of walking. But after Jesus’s horrific death and wondrous resurrection, the conversation must have changed. However, Jesus wasn’t around for these gaps in time—the details in the story come when Jesus is interacting with his disciples, and then he disappears again and we get the time gaps.
Here’s the question I’ve been pondering: what made the disciples decide it was time to go back to Galilee? They knew Jesus was resurrected—Thomas even believed by this point in time. We don’t have a record of Jesus telling the disciples to go home. At the end of last week’s reading, we get a short message from Jesus: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” and then the gospel writer tells us “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book” (20:29-30). So maybe he did tell them to go home, but my guess is that this was a decision the disciples came to on their own.
Most likely they weren’t really sure what else to do so they went home—but they continued to stay together as a group. Peter decides to go fishing—a fairly normal activity, it seems, even though John’s gospel never actually calls the disciples fishermen. They know enough, though, to go fishing at night, which I found out was actually the best time to fish on that part of the Sea of Galilee. They don’t have much luck, until Jesus shows up. New Testament scholar Raymond Brown points out that the disciples never catch a fish in the Gospels without Jesus’s help. Apparently some things have stayed the same.
So here are these disciples who know that Jesus is resurrected, yet they don’t know what to do with that information so they go back home and take up a normal activity. I’m not sure if they knew Jesus was even going to show up again, as Peter is extremely excited when they figure out it’s Jesus on the shore, and he swims 100 yards in to see him. And, as our collect for today says, Jesus makes himself known in the breaking of bread—in sharing a meal, which is something the disciples did quite often with their teacher.
All of this seems to be building up to something, but what? I’d never thought about it before, but there’s a real sense of being lost on the part of the disciples. They have no idea how life as we know it has changed now that Jesus is resurrected. Everything looks the same, tastes the same, sounds the same, and maybe even feels the same. But the fundamental underpinning of life—namely, death—had been completely overturned. Jesus defeated death. Death does not have the ultimate hold on our lives anymore. But what does this even mean?
We begin to get a glimpse of what it might mean for us in Jesus’s conversation with Peter. This is the only one-on-one conversation we get between these two in John after Peter’s denial of Christ. Jesus approaches Peter and calls him “Simon, son of John,” the exact same title he used when meeting Peter for the first time. Raymond Brown says this return to a formal address signals a possible challenge to the friendship between Jesus and Peter. And then Jesus goes a step further—he says Peter, do you love me? I can only imagine the incredible pain, sadness, and longing that took over this apostle as the one he denied looks him in the face and says, “do you love me?” This is the point of Peter’s deepest shame. His past actions would make the answer seem that it was no. He claimed he would lay down his life for Jesus and would follow him, and when the moment to do so came, he turned away and denied him (13:36-38). And now Jesus has to bring it back up again—there’s no “forgive and forget” here. To make things even worse Jesus asks the question three times, not only mirroring the three denials of Peter but also frustrating Peter as he tries to make Jesus know that he does indeed love him.
This conversation can show us how the resurrection changes everything in our lives. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes in his book, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, about how our normal interactions are based on the relationship of oppressor and oppressed. For all of us, we are a complex mix of people who oppress others and people who are oppressed by others and ourselves. This model of persecutor/victim or oppressor/oppressed is with us from the very beginning—before we even have a chance to understand it fully. There has only been one pure victim in history, one person who could make the choice to oppress and did not, one victim who fully understood the system—one who was not an oppressor but was only oppressed. That person is Jesus. In the conversation with Peter, we see the pure victim facing one of his closest friends, and one who oppressed him through denial. Peter is ashamed, and understandably so. I’m ashamed of myself when I hurt my friends and family—the thought of having to face that shame with Christ is almost agonizing. The reason for this is that I’m stuck in that idea of oppressor/oppressed. I’m functioning in an out-dated model, because the resurrection allows us to transcend the victim/persecutor relationship! It has been completely transformed. This does not mean that we “forgive and forget.” Rather, Williams writes that the transformation of our relationships is built upon our histories—even those that involve oppression, shame, and guilt (12). The real beauty of this is that our pasts and presents are not final. They are not the last word. The resurrection-JESUS-is the last Word!
Let’s think about this for a moment. Peter is the oppressor, and in today’s Gospel we see him speaking with Jesus one-on-one after his Resurrection. He faces his victim head on as Jesus ask,s “do you love me?” Peter is upset; Jesus has brought up the lowest thing he’s ever done, the most violent oppression he’s likely ever committed, and Peter has to answer. He doesn’t know how the resurrection has changed everything yet, and is stuck in the model of victim/persecutor, and all that comes with those relationships. Will Jesus be angry? Get even? Judge him? Berate him? But the resurrection transcends all of that—Jesus builds from Peter’s past and opens a place for the Gospel to take hold. What I find even more marvelous about this is that it’s not a one and done thing—it’s a process. “Feed.” “Tend.” “Follow.” These are verbs requiring continuous action.
The resurrection is for us a transformative process as it was for Peter, and as we heard today it would be for Paul as well. Jesus’s defeat of death in the resurrection changed everything about human existence—we are no longer tied to relationships based on oppression and a desperate struggle for life. Rather, we can transcend that and recognize the face of the risen Christ in one another and treat each other as such. We don’t have to fight against death anymore-Jesus already did that and won. We are called, instead, to live out a resurrectional reality in which we uphold Christ in one another, and overcome the bonds of this world that seek to drag us down, instead recognizing our bonds as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is part of the reason we renew our baptismal vows at the Great Vigil of Easter—to remind us that in the resurrection of Jesus “we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever,” and what that commitment means. That mark that is put on our foreheads in baptism is something that no one can take away—even those with whom we disagree deeply. The mark of baptism overcomes our human fickleness, anxieties, and jealousies, and instead is a mark of the resurrection. We are sealed as people of the resurrection. The challenge for us now is to live that way. For Peter and Paul, their resurrectional realities would take them throughout the Mediterranean world, proclaiming the Good News. Where will it take us?
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Fail is a Four Letter Word.
Part of the (almost) daily adventure of my life is my commute. It's not something I particularly enjoy-56 miles in the car, or 1 hour 15 minutes depending on traffic, each way can get pretty old pretty fast. Some days the commute seems shorter than others, but it's part of my life and I try not to complain too much about it. The negatives to it are pretty huge: leaving a big carbon footprint, using tons of fuel, time spent driving when it could be spent doing more useful or exciting things... But the positives are pretty huge to: most importantly, a job (it's the closest I could find) at a place I love with people who are really great, having a house, and enforced time to sit and think or pray, which I would otherwise fill with reading, memorizing vocab, or any number of other things I "have" to get done. My daily drive is often a time when I can just think through things or notice the changing seasons or just talk to God. That's a plus.But part of what comes with driving is the safety issue. R is a great car guy-he takes cars that just don't work anymore and makes them run beautifully. He got my car, Jack Sparrow, last summer for under 200 dollars. It had been sitting in some guy's garage for five years, but it's relatively rust free (which is huge in New England) and it runs well and I like it. So win-win. When he got the car driving again, he noticed a road noise that wasn't going on in his Subaru, or in the one I owned at the time. This was unique to this car. But it wasn't messing with the driving ability of the vehicle at all, so we both assumed it was the tires being slightly out of round from sitting for so long (although I think R did think it could be a suspension issue as well).
The tire-noise relationship was pretty much confirmed when I switched out the all-weathers for snow tires in December and the noise went away. Then in March I put the all-weathers back on, with the former rear tires going in the front, as you're supposed to do on Subaru's (some other cars involve changing sides too, but not on these cars). Well, the road noise was back and accompanied by a steering wheel jerking that I hadn't noticed in the fall. It had been getting progressively worse, in my mind, but I thought I was just being paranoid.
Until Sunday.
I was driving down the Mass Pike with R in the passenger seat on my way to work. It was about 7:30 in the morning (I like to get there before I have to teach Sunday School so I can collect myself) and traffic was thus pretty light, as it usually is on Sunday mornings. Driving in the right lane at about 65 mph all of a sudden we hear a loud pop, the front passenger side of the car lowers, R says "stop stop stop!" as I quickly pull into the emergency lane and come to a stop (this is the second time I've had to make an insane yet wonderfully executed emergency stop like this, the first time having been with R again in the passenger seat on the way home from work in the dark and rain when a huge truck ran me off the highway because he doesn't know how to check his mirrors...that was scary).
Here comes my favorite part of the whole event: R gets out of the car looks down and says "yep, looks like we lost the front wheel." I'm thinking to myself "holy sh$%! the whole front wheel? Wouldn't there have been sparks and flames or something?" Obviously he just meant the tire. The picture at the top is the epic fail blowout I had. There was a hunk of tire that fell off on the side of the highway and the steel band was broken and sticking out. I mean, this wasn't just a little blowout. It was huge. The tire was mangled like I've never seen a mangled tire before. Crazy.
Now, to be fair I could have handled all of this on my own just fine. I've known how to change a tire since I was a teenager and have done it often enough (for example, I change out my own all weathers to snow tires and vice-versa every year), so this wouldn't have been a big deal. But it would have been messy, and as I was in a skirt and clerical shirt (no collar though, as it was at the office) and still had to go do services at 10:30, R was very dashing and did all of the tire changing for me so I wouldn't have to get dirty. A state trooper pulled over and after making sure we were alright parked behind us so folks would get out of the right lane, as there's a slow done-change lane law in MA when there's an emergency vehicle (although after this experience I think it should be for all breakdowns, as there were some folks cutting it a little close, I felt, and we were obviously changing a tire).
Then we drove to the next plaza, which was only a mile away, R washed his hands, and we were off to work. He then went and got me four new tires, as we didn't know how old the rear two were, and it made sense to replace all four. R tells me that the steel band had broken sometime when the former owner had it, and that was the road noise. It got worse when the tires were put on the front, and finally gave out on Sunday-hence the huge bits of steel hanging out of the dead tire.
Needless to say, it wasn't a suspension issue. Thank God for light Sunday morning traffic. Thank God for driving in the right lane. Thank God for brakes that work. But most of all, Thank God for our safety. For serious, yo.
The other "epic fail" of the last week is my poison ivy. I wasn't allergic to this stuff as a kid, but somehow developed a sensitivity in the past few years. October 2008 I had a short bout with the stuff, and ended up having to get a steroid cream when it spread from my right wrist to my stomach. This time it went left ankle-left heel-right wrist-stomach-left ankle. Insane. And I can't figure out where it is-I know it's in the backyard, but as I've only gotten it in the fall and spring I think it's when it's either coming up (and therefore I'm not likely to see it immediately when doing yard work) or wilted (in which case I also wouldn't notice it), but either way the oils are still active and pesky. This time, after hoping for a week it would just go away but watching it spread, I had to get the oral prednisone to help out. I read online that poison ivy takes it out of you, but I didn't believe it. Now I do-at the doctor's office my blood pressure was a little high, and every time I've tried to work out this week it's been kind of tough. I seriously think it's the combo of the poison ivy all over me and the meds. Lame-o-la. But hopefully it will all be gone by the weekend (it seems to be clearing up already. Knock on wood).
In summary: tire blowout=fail. Poison ivy=fail.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Oops
So much for that "blogging several times a week thing," eh? Oh well. C'est la vie. And la vie has been quite busy for the past month. Where to begin? At some random point I guess. So I'll just categorize things as I go along:
Work: This is the main reason I've been out of the blogsphere for a while. No one warned me that while Lent is supposed to be a reflective, slower time for folks, it's insanity for those working in the church. There were several weeks when I saw R but a couple of times, and then it was to eat a late dinner and then call it a night. It was hectic, to say the least. But good-our "family" Lenten discipline was to stop going out to eat, aside from Sundays (which are feast days anyway so Lent doesn't really hold those days) when we eat lunch near church as otherwise we wouldn't eat until 3 PM, and I'm usually starving by the time we leave church. R looked as the finances and said we actually saved a bundle o' money through this discipline. Our plan is to keep it up, to a certain extent-we plan on going out for a date night once a month, but other than that chilling at home. This has been helped by the fact that we're now making our own pizza. We use the store-brand fresh or frozen wheat dough and go from there. It's actually way better than take out, and we've enjoyed the experience. I think we've also been more intentional about what we're cooking and planning our meals for the entire week. It's been great, all around. And now that it's about time for the grill to be in use almost every night, meal planning should be even easier!
Yesterday was Easter, the culmination of Holy Week which was busy on the one hand and not on the other. At 7:30 yesterday morning, after having slept in my office on Saturday night, the rector told me that I should perform the two baptisms, as I'd been working with the family and he didn't really know them. He then said I should just go ahead and celebrate too. This was at the 10:30 AM Easter service-the most highly attended service of the year, I'd venture to guess (more than at Christmas, but we have 3 services that night so folks are spread out). So I did my first baptisms yesterday! A 4 year old and his little sister, who was 11 days old (and ADORABLE). It was great : ) and definitely made my Easter!
Non-work wise things have been fine. I made my PhD decision and am super excited about it. I think it's the right place for me to be, and the visit I made was absolutely fantastic. I'll make a more official announcement once things are more official (the paperwork is getting started on their end this week) but hurray for that decision being made! I feel that I can move on and start getting excited about it. And start reviewing my Greek and French and making some headway in Latin this summer. Woot! I also want to get a paper I wrote last fall (2008) worked up for publication/conference paper presentation. Hopefully I'll be able to make that work.
As I said above, I haven't seen R too much in the past month. My Team in Training stuff is rolling along-I'm hoping donations will pick up a little soon (I'm sending out a reminder letter this week) as I have to reach my goal by May 4 or else I have to cough up the money on my own, which could pose a problem as I don't have that kind of money. Yikes. It freaks me out to think about, but my brother is going to have a concert in Iowa (at least, he's supposed to!) that will hopefully bring in some donations, and some folks at work are interested as well.
I've been doing some hiking on my own, as all of the team hikes in March were on days when I had work stuff I had to do. I hiked Mt. Wachusett two weeks ago, and today did a little on the Holyoke Range. My legs are going to feel today's hike tomorrow! I would normally have been able to go a little farther than I did today, but I was sick for a few days at the end of the week before last, and it took me a little while to recover fully from the allergy/cold/sinus thing. I'm just glad it's over, and hopefully that will be it for sinus crap this year!
Ummmm...yeah. That's all I've got on this end for the moment. The weather has been AWESOME lately-Easter was glorious! Mid-70s and sunny, which is a rarity for New England. Often it's gray and cold, but not this year! I think it might get into the 80s this week, which is bizarre but there you go. El Nino.
That's it for the moment. Hopefully I'll be more on top of this thing...
Work: This is the main reason I've been out of the blogsphere for a while. No one warned me that while Lent is supposed to be a reflective, slower time for folks, it's insanity for those working in the church. There were several weeks when I saw R but a couple of times, and then it was to eat a late dinner and then call it a night. It was hectic, to say the least. But good-our "family" Lenten discipline was to stop going out to eat, aside from Sundays (which are feast days anyway so Lent doesn't really hold those days) when we eat lunch near church as otherwise we wouldn't eat until 3 PM, and I'm usually starving by the time we leave church. R looked as the finances and said we actually saved a bundle o' money through this discipline. Our plan is to keep it up, to a certain extent-we plan on going out for a date night once a month, but other than that chilling at home. This has been helped by the fact that we're now making our own pizza. We use the store-brand fresh or frozen wheat dough and go from there. It's actually way better than take out, and we've enjoyed the experience. I think we've also been more intentional about what we're cooking and planning our meals for the entire week. It's been great, all around. And now that it's about time for the grill to be in use almost every night, meal planning should be even easier!
Yesterday was Easter, the culmination of Holy Week which was busy on the one hand and not on the other. At 7:30 yesterday morning, after having slept in my office on Saturday night, the rector told me that I should perform the two baptisms, as I'd been working with the family and he didn't really know them. He then said I should just go ahead and celebrate too. This was at the 10:30 AM Easter service-the most highly attended service of the year, I'd venture to guess (more than at Christmas, but we have 3 services that night so folks are spread out). So I did my first baptisms yesterday! A 4 year old and his little sister, who was 11 days old (and ADORABLE). It was great : ) and definitely made my Easter!
Non-work wise things have been fine. I made my PhD decision and am super excited about it. I think it's the right place for me to be, and the visit I made was absolutely fantastic. I'll make a more official announcement once things are more official (the paperwork is getting started on their end this week) but hurray for that decision being made! I feel that I can move on and start getting excited about it. And start reviewing my Greek and French and making some headway in Latin this summer. Woot! I also want to get a paper I wrote last fall (2008) worked up for publication/conference paper presentation. Hopefully I'll be able to make that work.
As I said above, I haven't seen R too much in the past month. My Team in Training stuff is rolling along-I'm hoping donations will pick up a little soon (I'm sending out a reminder letter this week) as I have to reach my goal by May 4 or else I have to cough up the money on my own, which could pose a problem as I don't have that kind of money. Yikes. It freaks me out to think about, but my brother is going to have a concert in Iowa (at least, he's supposed to!) that will hopefully bring in some donations, and some folks at work are interested as well.
I've been doing some hiking on my own, as all of the team hikes in March were on days when I had work stuff I had to do. I hiked Mt. Wachusett two weeks ago, and today did a little on the Holyoke Range. My legs are going to feel today's hike tomorrow! I would normally have been able to go a little farther than I did today, but I was sick for a few days at the end of the week before last, and it took me a little while to recover fully from the allergy/cold/sinus thing. I'm just glad it's over, and hopefully that will be it for sinus crap this year!
Ummmm...yeah. That's all I've got on this end for the moment. The weather has been AWESOME lately-Easter was glorious! Mid-70s and sunny, which is a rarity for New England. Often it's gray and cold, but not this year! I think it might get into the 80s this week, which is bizarre but there you go. El Nino.
That's it for the moment. Hopefully I'll be more on top of this thing...
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Arg.
I was just going to post one of my sermons, but some tag in the html is preventing this from happening and I'm too tired/lazy at the moment to sort it out. Boo. Hopefully I'll get that worked out some time soon. Oh well.
In other news, I'm still super excited about the PhD news. I've heard from a few more places since then-I was accepted to another program (although news on funding is forthcoming-it's not a great fit, but it was nice to know they want me!), wait-listed at a place I expected to be totally rejected from, and rejected from another which really wasn't a great fit but was in the area. That puts me at 2 acceptances, 1 wait-list, and 2 rejections. Not too shabby, considering last year I didn't get in anywhere (including the place that wait-listed me!). I don't know where I'm at on the one wait-list, but I decided to stay on it for now and see if anyone kicks back their offer thereby opening me a spot. Of the places I'm still waiting to hear from, only 2 would be good fits-and one of those places doesn't necessarily guarantee funding and the other is a super long shot that I'm not expecting to get into anyway, so there you go. One of the four I seriously have no idea about, and the other is the worst fit of them all so I'm not too concerned about that application at this point.
So...yeah. Once I've made it official, I'll write some post about it. I did get an email from a professor I'd be working closely with at the good fit acceptance school, asking me if I had any questions and congratulating me on admission. That made me happy : ) She was great in person and we hit it off really well, so it was nice to see that continuing. I wrote her back with a couple of questions, and will likely go for a visit just to get a sense of things from the other side of the admissions process. And I've started looking at courses for the fall, which is fun. I'm still trying to figure out the major/minor set up of this particular school's program (you have a general major, a specific major, and a minor) so I have some idea about what sorts of classes I'm looking for. I'll probably start working on the reading list pretty early too, but then again I feel like I have a pretty decent idea of the stuff I'd want on that list for the early modern English church history list-at least part of it, anyway.
Exciting! That's the best word for this. I'm so blessed that I will get to pursue this vocation-it's creative, it's dynamic, and I feel that it's really really important for the church.
Oh and after a wonderful 5 or so days of 40 something degree weather, which allowed for a great hike and a run outside yesterday (and by the way I shaved 1 min. 20 seconds off my time from last year's average!!!), the snow is back. Boo.
In other news, I'm still super excited about the PhD news. I've heard from a few more places since then-I was accepted to another program (although news on funding is forthcoming-it's not a great fit, but it was nice to know they want me!), wait-listed at a place I expected to be totally rejected from, and rejected from another which really wasn't a great fit but was in the area. That puts me at 2 acceptances, 1 wait-list, and 2 rejections. Not too shabby, considering last year I didn't get in anywhere (including the place that wait-listed me!). I don't know where I'm at on the one wait-list, but I decided to stay on it for now and see if anyone kicks back their offer thereby opening me a spot. Of the places I'm still waiting to hear from, only 2 would be good fits-and one of those places doesn't necessarily guarantee funding and the other is a super long shot that I'm not expecting to get into anyway, so there you go. One of the four I seriously have no idea about, and the other is the worst fit of them all so I'm not too concerned about that application at this point.
So...yeah. Once I've made it official, I'll write some post about it. I did get an email from a professor I'd be working closely with at the good fit acceptance school, asking me if I had any questions and congratulating me on admission. That made me happy : ) She was great in person and we hit it off really well, so it was nice to see that continuing. I wrote her back with a couple of questions, and will likely go for a visit just to get a sense of things from the other side of the admissions process. And I've started looking at courses for the fall, which is fun. I'm still trying to figure out the major/minor set up of this particular school's program (you have a general major, a specific major, and a minor) so I have some idea about what sorts of classes I'm looking for. I'll probably start working on the reading list pretty early too, but then again I feel like I have a pretty decent idea of the stuff I'd want on that list for the early modern English church history list-at least part of it, anyway.
Exciting! That's the best word for this. I'm so blessed that I will get to pursue this vocation-it's creative, it's dynamic, and I feel that it's really really important for the church.
Oh and after a wonderful 5 or so days of 40 something degree weather, which allowed for a great hike and a run outside yesterday (and by the way I shaved 1 min. 20 seconds off my time from last year's average!!!), the snow is back. Boo.
Friday, February 19, 2010
:D
AHHHHH!!!!!! I just had to do that. This afternoon I got a phone call from a graduate program director telling me that I had been accepted into their program, with 5 years of full funding and a yearly stipend! Furthermore, he said that they really liked my application (although I'm guessing he said that to everyone he called as they wouldn't accept you if they didn't like the application).
I am...beside myself with excitement. Just last night I was talking to R about my doubts, and he in his calm way just reminded me that this could indeed happen. That's the great thing about my husband-he believes in me when my confidence falters. So when I called him today and told him, he said "what did I tell you yesterday?" Needless to say, I was more than happy to reply "you told me so." :D
So. I jumped up and down in the house and squealed after I got off the phone (I wish I had a video of it for you, Mom, as you're always complaining that my reactions are excited enough). I had a tough time keeping my cool on the phone with the graduate director as he was telling me the news-this program is on of my top choices-in fact, it might be my very top choice (given the other programs I applied to, how I fit into this program and their faculty, how my conversations with their faculty went, and the schools I've yet to hear from-I got rejected from Yale by the way). I'll post specifics once I've made it official-but for now, I'm just so happy. This is something I've felt called to very strongly, and I'm so blessed that I will be able to pursue this vocation.
ROCK ON!!!!!!!
I am...beside myself with excitement. Just last night I was talking to R about my doubts, and he in his calm way just reminded me that this could indeed happen. That's the great thing about my husband-he believes in me when my confidence falters. So when I called him today and told him, he said "what did I tell you yesterday?" Needless to say, I was more than happy to reply "you told me so." :D
So. I jumped up and down in the house and squealed after I got off the phone (I wish I had a video of it for you, Mom, as you're always complaining that my reactions are excited enough). I had a tough time keeping my cool on the phone with the graduate director as he was telling me the news-this program is on of my top choices-in fact, it might be my very top choice (given the other programs I applied to, how I fit into this program and their faculty, how my conversations with their faculty went, and the schools I've yet to hear from-I got rejected from Yale by the way). I'll post specifics once I've made it official-but for now, I'm just so happy. This is something I've felt called to very strongly, and I'm so blessed that I will be able to pursue this vocation.
ROCK ON!!!!!!!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Remembering Alan
Yesterday I got some heartbreaking news. A close friend of mine from college, Alan, committed suicide last Friday. We hadn't spoken in some years-he was always kind of bohemian and hard to get a hold of-but the news hit me really, really hard. I thought I would take a moment here to remember this wonderful person.
Alan was...different. Different than anyone I've ever known. I think the best way to describe him is as a living poem-beautiful, deep, yet only truly understood by the author. There always seemed to be some part of him that I just couldn't tap in to, no matter how much time we spent together (which was a fair amount). I'm not one who talks about "figuring people out," as I find that ridiculous, but there was an air of the enigmatic about Alan. He lived in a small apartment on College St. near the top of the hill. His bedroom was also his kitchen, and his computer room had one recliner, a desk, a computer, and a desk chair. He was the picture of simple living.
I have nothing but great memories of Alan. We met in a seminar in college, Buddhism in America I believe. I remember being fascinated by him (he sat on the other side of the seminar table from me), and slowly we got to know one another. We were TA's in the intro to Asian Religions class together. What was great is that our conversations and friendship went way beyond class (in fact I don't think we spent tons of time talking about class topics). We went to see My Morning Jacket together in Nashville. He gave me an aloe plant that survived for years even when I didn't water it. I still have the fan he brought me from Myanmar (I think that's where he went...maybe Cambodia) that hung on my walls in graduate school. I remember eating purple rice with coconut milk with him in his apartment. Or ordering pizza and drinking hard cider, and then both of us having horrible stomach aches afterwards. He's the reason I drink hot tea-it was a jasmine tea that he got me to try that helped me realize hot tea could actually be good. I remember him telling me about how he went hiking at Mammoth Cave and night came on sooner than he expected, so he slept on the side of the trail with the map as his blanket. We went to Barnes and Noble one night, came out to the parking lot, and his truck had popped out of gear and rolled into the door of the person parked next to him. Before that he had this great Jeep Cherokee that I was jealous of. He is the only person I've known who I thought would be a good monk. He gave me a copy of an Appalachian music cd that he called "Hilary's Reel" and continues to be one of my all time favorite albums. I listen to it constantly, and now it will have more meaning.
As I said before, Alan and I hadn't spoken for many years. Once I graduated from WKU and headed to graduate school, we fell out of touch-which I'll admit is partially my fault. Though as I said in my defense he's always been really hard to get a hold of (I remember just having to walk to his apartment sometimes because he wouldn't answer his phone-or he'd lost it). I learned yesterday that he'd been working with the homeless in Virginia and was suffering from depression and had some questions he wanted to ask God directly. Even though we hadn't spoken in a while, I thought (and still think) of Alan often. There was some part of me that felt...safe? warm? I don't know the word....knowing he was somewhere in the world doing good work. He was one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honor of knowing, and the world has lost a truly good and beautiful person.
Alan-I hope you've found some peace. You were a wonderful human being, very much loved, and we'll miss you. May light perpetual shine upon you, my friend.
Alan was...different. Different than anyone I've ever known. I think the best way to describe him is as a living poem-beautiful, deep, yet only truly understood by the author. There always seemed to be some part of him that I just couldn't tap in to, no matter how much time we spent together (which was a fair amount). I'm not one who talks about "figuring people out," as I find that ridiculous, but there was an air of the enigmatic about Alan. He lived in a small apartment on College St. near the top of the hill. His bedroom was also his kitchen, and his computer room had one recliner, a desk, a computer, and a desk chair. He was the picture of simple living.
I have nothing but great memories of Alan. We met in a seminar in college, Buddhism in America I believe. I remember being fascinated by him (he sat on the other side of the seminar table from me), and slowly we got to know one another. We were TA's in the intro to Asian Religions class together. What was great is that our conversations and friendship went way beyond class (in fact I don't think we spent tons of time talking about class topics). We went to see My Morning Jacket together in Nashville. He gave me an aloe plant that survived for years even when I didn't water it. I still have the fan he brought me from Myanmar (I think that's where he went...maybe Cambodia) that hung on my walls in graduate school. I remember eating purple rice with coconut milk with him in his apartment. Or ordering pizza and drinking hard cider, and then both of us having horrible stomach aches afterwards. He's the reason I drink hot tea-it was a jasmine tea that he got me to try that helped me realize hot tea could actually be good. I remember him telling me about how he went hiking at Mammoth Cave and night came on sooner than he expected, so he slept on the side of the trail with the map as his blanket. We went to Barnes and Noble one night, came out to the parking lot, and his truck had popped out of gear and rolled into the door of the person parked next to him. Before that he had this great Jeep Cherokee that I was jealous of. He is the only person I've known who I thought would be a good monk. He gave me a copy of an Appalachian music cd that he called "Hilary's Reel" and continues to be one of my all time favorite albums. I listen to it constantly, and now it will have more meaning.
As I said before, Alan and I hadn't spoken for many years. Once I graduated from WKU and headed to graduate school, we fell out of touch-which I'll admit is partially my fault. Though as I said in my defense he's always been really hard to get a hold of (I remember just having to walk to his apartment sometimes because he wouldn't answer his phone-or he'd lost it). I learned yesterday that he'd been working with the homeless in Virginia and was suffering from depression and had some questions he wanted to ask God directly. Even though we hadn't spoken in a while, I thought (and still think) of Alan often. There was some part of me that felt...safe? warm? I don't know the word....knowing he was somewhere in the world doing good work. He was one of the most compassionate people I have ever had the honor of knowing, and the world has lost a truly good and beautiful person.
Alan-I hope you've found some peace. You were a wonderful human being, very much loved, and we'll miss you. May light perpetual shine upon you, my friend.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Team in Training
Anyone who has been following this blog may have noticed something new along the right hand side of this blog...any guesses? That's right-there's a new Team in Training widget as well as a link to my personal Team in Training fundraising website.
What's this all about? Well, Team in Training is a group/event/fundraising thingy put together by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). People train for endurance events-be they marathons, half marathons, century bike rides, triathlons, or hiking adventures-and raise money to support the research and other projects of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a really really great organization.
If you remember, my brother was diagnosed with Berkitt's lymphoma in November 2008. Thankfully, he has now been cancer-free for about 9 months now! LLS not only supported us through the treatments developed by their researchers, but in real, on the ground ways that probably aren't apparent to those who have not been treated for a blood cancer (or who haven't been with a family member being treated for one).
Anyway I decided while Nathan was being treated that I would do a Team in Training event-I mean, he endured chemo, the least I could do was endure some physical training to raise money that will help find a cure for blood cancers. So in May, I will be traveling with a group of people from MA to join other from around the country to hike part of the Grand Canyon. I'll be keeping a blog of my training experiences, etc. on my fundraising webpage.
Now here's where you come in. I need to raise $4,350 to participate in this program. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS!!!!! Anything you can give will be helpful. Just think-if 440 people gave 10 bucks, then this goal could be easily met. So PLEASE, help in any way you can. The fundraising widget will take you to a donation page, while the link above it will take you to my personal fundraising page, where you can see my updates on how the training is going as well as donate. And the widget also shows how close I'm getting to my goal.
Can you help?
What's this all about? Well, Team in Training is a group/event/fundraising thingy put together by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). People train for endurance events-be they marathons, half marathons, century bike rides, triathlons, or hiking adventures-and raise money to support the research and other projects of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a really really great organization.
If you remember, my brother was diagnosed with Berkitt's lymphoma in November 2008. Thankfully, he has now been cancer-free for about 9 months now! LLS not only supported us through the treatments developed by their researchers, but in real, on the ground ways that probably aren't apparent to those who have not been treated for a blood cancer (or who haven't been with a family member being treated for one).
Anyway I decided while Nathan was being treated that I would do a Team in Training event-I mean, he endured chemo, the least I could do was endure some physical training to raise money that will help find a cure for blood cancers. So in May, I will be traveling with a group of people from MA to join other from around the country to hike part of the Grand Canyon. I'll be keeping a blog of my training experiences, etc. on my fundraising webpage.
Now here's where you come in. I need to raise $4,350 to participate in this program. EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS!!!!! Anything you can give will be helpful. Just think-if 440 people gave 10 bucks, then this goal could be easily met. So PLEASE, help in any way you can. The fundraising widget will take you to a donation page, while the link above it will take you to my personal fundraising page, where you can see my updates on how the training is going as well as donate. And the widget also shows how close I'm getting to my goal.
Can you help?
Saturday, February 06, 2010
3 cubed
I would have put a superscript in that title, but I'm not sure what the html for it is, and I'm not really feeling in the mood to look it up. So there we go.
Anyway I'm 3 cubed now! 9 is my favorite number, so one could also say I'm 9+9+9 which is nice and trinitarian in a way. Which I like for obvious reasons. I had a good birthday-R and I had lunch together, then met some friends for dinner and bowling. We were supposed to go bowling for my birthday two years ago and it snowed so that never happened. I've been telling him he owes me bowling for the past two years and now he's made good on that one. Woohoo! I didn't win, but I did come in second (losing only by 1 point on the 2nd game). It was great.
This morning I headed to the kick off for Team in Training. I'll post more on that this week, but it's a big thing I'm doing this spring and I'll be putting up a link for you all to follow for my TNT website (it is in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, but like I said more on that later).
The next few weeks look like they're going to be pretty crazy-lots of evening stuff at work coming up, which can be hard because when a meeting at work ends at 8:30, I don't get home until 10. And then I have to be up and ready to be back at work by 9 the next day, which involves leaving home between 7-7:30 am. The lack of sleep won't be the hardest part, I think. The challenge will be getting my workouts in and actually getting to see my husband. We don't get enough hang out time during the week as it is, since we both get home around 7 and then go to the gym and don't sit down for dinner until 9:30. But Ash Wednesday is almost upon us, which brings with it Shrove Tuesday. And this week is a meeting week. And then the week after all of that I'm going to KY for diocesan convention and hang out time with the fam.
The bright side of this is that hopefully it will keep me busy enough to focus less on waiting for PhD admissions decisions. There are days when I feel like I put in a great application, and other days when I feel that despite of that application there were lots of others who probably put in better applications. And then I start freaking out about what I'm going to do if I don't get in, in terms of finding another part time job. Bleh. It's really really stressful, but I should start hearing something in the next few weeks.
In the meantime I've been reading some good stuff-right now I'm working on Eamon Duffy's The Fires of Faith, and will post a review of that soon as well as two books by Helen Fielding I've been reading. So keep your eyes open for those.
We brewed a couple of weeks ago (A sweet stout, or chocolate stout depending on who you talk to) which means bottling day is fast approaching. We got some tips from a friend that should make it less messy AND I found a piece of the kit that I thought we didn't get that should make the siphon work waaaaaaaaaay better. Bottling last time was very wet and sticky (there's lots of sugar involved) but hopefully this time it won't be. I like beer but sitting covered in it for an hour and a half was kind of not that great. And then the beer should be ready to go in a month! I think our next brew is going to be a wheat beer we've got-just in time for spring! One (or both) of the yeasts we have left are starting to age a bit so we may have to buy more. Luckily they're not stupid expensive.
That's about all I've got. Hopefully my blog posts this week will be a little more planned. This was more of a stream of consciousness thing-albeit more organized as my real stream of consciousness is never this cohesive-at least it wouldn't be to anyone who's not me.
Hope you're staying warm and dry!
Anyway I'm 3 cubed now! 9 is my favorite number, so one could also say I'm 9+9+9 which is nice and trinitarian in a way. Which I like for obvious reasons. I had a good birthday-R and I had lunch together, then met some friends for dinner and bowling. We were supposed to go bowling for my birthday two years ago and it snowed so that never happened. I've been telling him he owes me bowling for the past two years and now he's made good on that one. Woohoo! I didn't win, but I did come in second (losing only by 1 point on the 2nd game). It was great.
This morning I headed to the kick off for Team in Training. I'll post more on that this week, but it's a big thing I'm doing this spring and I'll be putting up a link for you all to follow for my TNT website (it is in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, but like I said more on that later).
The next few weeks look like they're going to be pretty crazy-lots of evening stuff at work coming up, which can be hard because when a meeting at work ends at 8:30, I don't get home until 10. And then I have to be up and ready to be back at work by 9 the next day, which involves leaving home between 7-7:30 am. The lack of sleep won't be the hardest part, I think. The challenge will be getting my workouts in and actually getting to see my husband. We don't get enough hang out time during the week as it is, since we both get home around 7 and then go to the gym and don't sit down for dinner until 9:30. But Ash Wednesday is almost upon us, which brings with it Shrove Tuesday. And this week is a meeting week. And then the week after all of that I'm going to KY for diocesan convention and hang out time with the fam.
The bright side of this is that hopefully it will keep me busy enough to focus less on waiting for PhD admissions decisions. There are days when I feel like I put in a great application, and other days when I feel that despite of that application there were lots of others who probably put in better applications. And then I start freaking out about what I'm going to do if I don't get in, in terms of finding another part time job. Bleh. It's really really stressful, but I should start hearing something in the next few weeks.
In the meantime I've been reading some good stuff-right now I'm working on Eamon Duffy's The Fires of Faith, and will post a review of that soon as well as two books by Helen Fielding I've been reading. So keep your eyes open for those.
We brewed a couple of weeks ago (A sweet stout, or chocolate stout depending on who you talk to) which means bottling day is fast approaching. We got some tips from a friend that should make it less messy AND I found a piece of the kit that I thought we didn't get that should make the siphon work waaaaaaaaaay better. Bottling last time was very wet and sticky (there's lots of sugar involved) but hopefully this time it won't be. I like beer but sitting covered in it for an hour and a half was kind of not that great. And then the beer should be ready to go in a month! I think our next brew is going to be a wheat beer we've got-just in time for spring! One (or both) of the yeasts we have left are starting to age a bit so we may have to buy more. Luckily they're not stupid expensive.
That's about all I've got. Hopefully my blog posts this week will be a little more planned. This was more of a stream of consciousness thing-albeit more organized as my real stream of consciousness is never this cohesive-at least it wouldn't be to anyone who's not me.
Hope you're staying warm and dry!
Monday, February 01, 2010
Milestone and Resolution FAIL
Two things. Well, three really.
1. I didn't post last week-so much for that "resolution." But the great thing is that I can just write it off as a bad job and try to do better this week. Hopefully.
2. You may have noticed a blog layout change. I do this every now and then, mostly because I just get bored with the way the blog looks. This time it was largely due to the fact that I wanted to include a picture in the header, and my old format wasn't the best for such a thing. This picture is bigger than I want it, but my edited picture keeps coming up as corrupt for some reason so whatever. For those who are interested, this picture was taken in Istria in May, 2008 on the way to this tiny church with really great murals on the inside. The countryside was beautiful, and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day.
3. Now, for the real meat of the post. I reached a running milestone this weekend! I posted a while back about how I'm a pretty slow runner, but then I realized I run about the speed a butterfly flies so that was a nice discovery. I've still been trying to get my speed up, though, and this weekend I reached a new level. Usually on the treadmill I run between 5.4 and 5.6 mph, with elevation varying depending on the run setting I'm using (when I do a 5K a couple of times a week there are some hills, and then on "easy" days I just run on 0 elevation). R and I have been upping our cardio times to 45-60 minutes/day. This weekend I got on the treadmill expecting to do my usual 5.4-5.6 speed, but after about 15 minutes I decided to see what would happen if I bumped it up to 6.0 mph. I did so, planning to do 10 minutes on that if I could (I'd only ever run about 2 minutes at 6.0 before). At the ten minute mark I decided to see if I could make 15. Then if I could make 20. Then...25. Then I felt like my legs were going to fall off, so I walked for 5 minutes and THEN finished is up with another 5 bringing it to 30 whole minutes at 6.0! I then ran another 15 at 5.4. I think I ended up running about 5.3 miles on Saturday, which is the most I've ever run and the fastest I've ever run. Wahoo!
Yesterday my legs were definitely sore, but it was so cool to know that I could go that speed for that amount of time. Hopefully I'll be able to build up the endurance so it doesn't feel quite so out of control at the end of the 30 minutes, and then 6.0 can be my normal pace and I can stay there for a while. Sweet.
As R said, it's crazy to think about how far we've come in terms of running since we started in the winter of 2007 by running 1 minute and walking 1 minute for 30 minutes. But the method from the book R got for Christmas from his brother worked, and here we are running for more extended periods of time. Awesome.
In other big news, I'm doing Team in Training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I'll have another post forthcoming on that and how YOU can help out. : )
1. I didn't post last week-so much for that "resolution." But the great thing is that I can just write it off as a bad job and try to do better this week. Hopefully.
2. You may have noticed a blog layout change. I do this every now and then, mostly because I just get bored with the way the blog looks. This time it was largely due to the fact that I wanted to include a picture in the header, and my old format wasn't the best for such a thing. This picture is bigger than I want it, but my edited picture keeps coming up as corrupt for some reason so whatever. For those who are interested, this picture was taken in Istria in May, 2008 on the way to this tiny church with really great murals on the inside. The countryside was beautiful, and this is one of my favorite pictures from that day.
3. Now, for the real meat of the post. I reached a running milestone this weekend! I posted a while back about how I'm a pretty slow runner, but then I realized I run about the speed a butterfly flies so that was a nice discovery. I've still been trying to get my speed up, though, and this weekend I reached a new level. Usually on the treadmill I run between 5.4 and 5.6 mph, with elevation varying depending on the run setting I'm using (when I do a 5K a couple of times a week there are some hills, and then on "easy" days I just run on 0 elevation). R and I have been upping our cardio times to 45-60 minutes/day. This weekend I got on the treadmill expecting to do my usual 5.4-5.6 speed, but after about 15 minutes I decided to see what would happen if I bumped it up to 6.0 mph. I did so, planning to do 10 minutes on that if I could (I'd only ever run about 2 minutes at 6.0 before). At the ten minute mark I decided to see if I could make 15. Then if I could make 20. Then...25. Then I felt like my legs were going to fall off, so I walked for 5 minutes and THEN finished is up with another 5 bringing it to 30 whole minutes at 6.0! I then ran another 15 at 5.4. I think I ended up running about 5.3 miles on Saturday, which is the most I've ever run and the fastest I've ever run. Wahoo!
Yesterday my legs were definitely sore, but it was so cool to know that I could go that speed for that amount of time. Hopefully I'll be able to build up the endurance so it doesn't feel quite so out of control at the end of the 30 minutes, and then 6.0 can be my normal pace and I can stay there for a while. Sweet.
As R said, it's crazy to think about how far we've come in terms of running since we started in the winter of 2007 by running 1 minute and walking 1 minute for 30 minutes. But the method from the book R got for Christmas from his brother worked, and here we are running for more extended periods of time. Awesome.
In other big news, I'm doing Team in Training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I'll have another post forthcoming on that and how YOU can help out. : )
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