summer's end

I spent the last week on vacation, away from screens of computers and laptops and phones. Instead, we hiked through forests and camped amongst the trees. We carried our sleeping bags and mats and food and water on our backs. We worked up a good sweat.

We found a campsite across from the stream and set up our tent. We cooked up dinner over a little camp stove (no fires allowed) by boiling water and pouring into special freeze-dried camp food pouches.  

We slept on the hard ground in the darkness of the trees, with only the sounds of crickets and the stream and the occasional airplane flying overhead. In the morning, I did some yoga amidst the trees to wake up my stiff muscles for the return hike. Then we cooked eggs over the camp stove to eat with  homemade protein bars and hot tea for additional warmth + energy.  

We trekked back up the mountain, and spotted deer and snakes and signs of fall. Thankfully, no bears.

Then, the day after we returned with sore backs, we packed up and drove four hours to the beach. We stayed in a nice hotel for free thanks to many accumulated points from business travel. 

We sat on our beach chairs next to the crashing ocean and read books in the sunshine. We marveled at the size of the waves and the blueness of the cloudless sky and basked in the warmth of the sun. We trekked across giant sand dunes and marveled at the ingenuity of a pair of brothers at a flight memorial and found local restaurants to enjoy and dusted off our mini golf skills. We walked on the beach at nighttime and got up early so we could watch sunrise, and took a hundred photos of the pink sky above the churning sea. We swam in the salty water and bobbed in the waves and somersaulted as they crashed over us. We sat sandy and salty and finally got a bit of tan. 

Summer is glorious. I am glad we got this vacation in. It restored me. It is hard to explain just how powerful I find time at the beach. Love for the sea was instilled in me at a young age, perhaps due to my very first vacation to the Jersey shore at 3 months old. The only time I can truly say that I lived near the sea was the semester I spent in Ireland, with the Galway bay just a stone's throw from my little flat. And oh how I loved being so close to the water; I would go for long walks or runs along the shore and revel in the simple joy of walking barefoot through the sand, gazing into the angry waters. It was almost as if the draw to the water comes from my Irish roots and was awakened somehow during those months. There is just something about that expanse of water hugged by a stretch of white sand on one side and the brilliant blue of the sky on the other that speaks to a place inside my heart, not with words but with a deep, restful peace. And I know that being lakeside is seen as somewhat of an imposter when compared to the ocean, considered inferior to those who were raised next to coasts. For me though, in the years I lived in Chicago, the dazzling green of the lake that stretched out as far as eye could see had the same effect. I saw the lake almost every day: my apartment was just a few blocks away from sandy beaches, and I rode buses for miles next to the water, and I ran almost as many miles along the lake as I trained for races, and from my office downtown I could look out into the greys and greens and blues of the water, dotted with white sail boats in the summer or coated in ice and snow in the winter, every day I that I was at work. To be honest when I first moved to Chicago I was not a big fan of the city because of the immensity of it all; it was overwhelming. But the lake ~ the lake soothed me. The lake won me over. I went to the beach (yes, "beach", the wide stretches of sand count in my eyes, even if the waves are smaller than in the ocean) on a weekly basis when the weather was nice.  

I did not know how much I would miss it until it was no longer here. Summer just did not feel the same without it. 

But! Now I know that the even more glorious sea shore is just 4 hours away. And though summer is quickly drawing to a close, I am already so excited for next summer, as I imagine future trips to that stretch of sand, to that expanse of churning ocean, to that brilliant blue sky and the warm summer sun. And for the moment, I feel more ready to finally say goodbye to the summer, now that I've gotten my fill of sand and sea salt and sun. 

chocolate and workouts

Happy Friday! Today was rainy and sleepy for me, thanks to allergies keeping me awake last night. A solution to Friday afternoon sleepiness is to read some fun science ~ when the article is a valid study related to health, then it’s not completely off track of my field of work, and the fun topic helps keep me awake :)

Being a big fan of chocolate, I was intrigued by this headline in the New York Times: “How Chocolate Can Help Your Workout.” It immediately triggered memories from a few years back of a Sunday afternoon when I was feeling tired but trying to convince myself to go for a run. I grabbed a couple Hershey kisses in hopes of a slight sugar rush to re-energize me enough to get out the door. In fact, I felt great for the entire run! Clearly chocolate was good workout fuel in my experience – and now science is proving it!

Well, kind of. It’s an interesting study from the Journal of Physiology that details experiments with rats who were given epicatechin, a purified form of the main nutritional component of cacao. Four groups were compared:

• rats who were given water and did not do any exercise
• rats who were given water and did a routine of light treadmill walking
• rats who were given epicatechin and not do any exercise
• rats who were given epicatechin and did a routine of light treadmill walking.

Then they ran all rats to exhaustion on the treadmill. The rats in the groups with epicatechin showed significantly enhanced abilities to run before fatiguing, with the rat+exercise group coming out best. The study also did some muscle biopsy and speculates on the possible reasons for this improvement (they pinpoint greater numbers of mitochondria in the muscles – if you remember biology class, these are the “powerhouses of the cell”, as in the cell components that process energy). Interesting!

Of course the author details a number of caveats in the NYT article: first, that mice are not people and therefore we can’t draw solid conclusions about human fitness from these results. Second they point out that processing cacao decreases the amount of epicatechin, so eating a Hershey bar is not the same thing. Third, the rats received a small dose, which would be comparable to a very small amount of dark chocolate for humans – and most humans don’t want to stop with one dark chocolate chip. And overeating chocolate leads to excess sugar and fat consumption, which should be avoided.

With those things in mind, it’s still nice to see some possible benefits to the occasional chocolate treat. To be sure, someone really needs to conduct a study with humans, using reasonable chocolate quantities. I'd definitely sign up for that study. Or maybe I can just sign up for DC's version of the Hot Chocolate run that I did last year... only this time, including some chocolate consumption with my training :)

into the wild

This weekend we had our first Virginia camping adventure! When we saw the forecast showing cooler temps for the end of the week, we started planning for a fun hiking/camping trip at the nearby Shenandoah National Park. I worked extra hours during the week so I could leave early on Friday. This was our first time doing back country camping (as opposed to car camping), and it worked out really well!

After some research, we chose this route for our hike, planning to do the first half on Friday, camp at the sites near the midpoint on the map, and then finish the route Saturday morning.

the weather was perfect!

We had the trail completely to ourselves for 99% of the trip (saw a few people Saturday morning right before we got back to the car).

Great views on this hike!

I had read reviews of this area with numerous people reporting bear sightings. We didn't see any (maybe my extra loud singing of Lady Gaga during dinner helped scare them off!) but we did see some snakes, lizards, and hawks circling.

Stream/wading pools next to the campsite 

Steve securing our food from the bears! 

Our home for the night! It was so peaceful. Hard to believe we didn't see anyone at all on Friday. Our previous camping experiences involved driving 3+ hours from Chicago, and even then the campsites we found had other people nearby sometimes talking loudly all night long. This camping experience by far beat out those car camping ones! It was so nice having nothing but crickets and tree frogs in the background as we slept under the trees.

Another perk of the hiking/camping combo~ hiking while carrying gear is quite a workout! We were sore for the rest of the weekend. That plus the combination of rainy/stormy weather (we got back to our car just in time Saturday morning to beat the rain!) meant we were lazy the rest of the weekend. But I'm so glad we got our little escape to the wilderness in. It's amazing having such a beautiful park so close by!

happy Easter!

it's a little late but I wanted to write about Easter. I thought I had some pictures but they don't seem to be on the camera for some reason?? Sigh. Not doing good at documenting things with photographs these days so I will have to settle for words.

Easter weekend felt like summer time. I have what feels like many memories of past easter egg hunts in the snow. So this year I absolutely basked in the balmy temperatures. We went hiking, twice. On Saturday we got antsy and decided to go out for a walk. We had seen on a map that a big trail system has a little link just down the road, so we went and checked it out. It was nice wandering through this skinny little trail with the leaves of green exploding all around us. We wound our way through a park, across a stream, down some residential streets - all marked with the little trail plaques. Apparently it winds its way for 20 miles all around town. We only walked for about 1.5 hours - out and back - but it was fun.

On Sunday again it felt like summer. I cooked up some french toast and then got dressed up in a skirt and painted my toenails bright pink. The first time I wear sandals each year always feels like a milestone for me. In reality I could have worn them sooner, as it has been warm for awhile here. But my toes were bare so I didn't break out the sandals just yet - until Easter! We went to mass and it was my very favorite kind, full of flowers and rejoicing and singing in Latin. The language nerd in me absolutely loves the singing in Latin. :) then, we drove out to the mountains. We realized that they are just 20 miles away! And we hiked some more. On the Appalachian trail, no less! It was hot, and hiking up hills will take some getting used to. But very fun to spend so much time outside. We came home and grilled up chicken and veggies outside, again. It was a good weekend, of finding joy in our new life. And I am looking forward to many more of the same.

working off the Christmas goodies

hello! I am in the snowy midwest at my in-laws house, and ready for a break from work and the festivities to begin! Just have to finish up some shopping this evening and hopefully we will be good.

If your families are anything like ours, you find yourself surrounded with abundant tasty treats during the holidays... it's hard to face that temptation without feeling guilty. Which is why I was happy to read this article in the New York Times last weekend ~ it discusses a study that found that participants who increased calorie and fat intake but worked out first thing in the morning (before breakfast) did not gain any weight or suffer other health consequences (like insulin resistance). Good news for anyone who likes to work out in the morning - which has been my routine recently. This morning when I was tempted to sleep in, I managed to get up and run 4 miles on the treadmill... thanks to reading that article! Totally ready for lots of Christmas goodies over the next few days :)

just dance

today I purchased a Groupon for 5 adult open dance classes at the Joffrey Ballet!!

I am so excited! I started ballet classes when I was 5, and continued (though intermittently) all the way through college. Post-college though I have not done much dancing at all. Dancing was always one of my favorite things, so I definitely miss it! And while I've thought about signing up for classes many times, I never committed, partially because of the cost, partially from lack of knowing what class to take. This deal is pretty great though ~ half off the price of a regular class, and it's a "drop in" style, meaning I can take whatever class I want, whenever - no booking 10 weeks of class up front. And the timing is perfect, as winter approaches and I just know that my motivation levels for exercising will drop along with the outdoor temperatures. Which means, time to mix things up with a new workout!

Now I just need to figure out which class to try, given that I've had a good number of years of ballet but never practiced it very seriously, and have not danced at all for 7 years now. Let's hope that yoga class has helped me maintain some flexibility! And I'll have to see if my old dance clothes actually fit.. yikes!

I can't help but be a little intimidated by the thought of taking a class through Joffrey, which is after all an amazing professional dance company. But hopefully these classes will be laid back, and a fun way to do a bit of dancing again. I found this picture taken during one of the adult open classes from the Joffrey Blog ~ check out the amazing studio, with huge windows over looking downtown Chicago! Can't wait to check it out!

survived!!

so it was probably obvious from yesterday's post that I was dreading the race today. My training runs have not been great lately, and also I am not a fan of cold weather. I had visions of a miserable 2 hours struggling through the race in the cold. Luckily, the reality was much much much better than that! I may have even enjoyed myself during the race!

Our alarms went off at 6 and we looked at each other and asked, are we really doing this? But after getting up and putting on our running gear, we were more energized ~ there's something about race-day morning I guess, that is exciting, even when anticipating sub-freezing temperatures.

Downtown it was a bit crazy with 30,000 runners trying to find their places. And it was cold. But we were prepared, with layers and running gloves/hat/ear warmers. Oh and the GU packets my mom thoughtfully put in a Halloween care package :) Also, being crowded in with the other runners had the advantage of providing a bit of extra warmth.

As for the running, I actually managed to force myself to slow down at the beginning, and stick to a reasonable pace. It was about the same pace that I did the half-marathon, so not super fast. But like I said my training runs were not great - I'd been running almost a minute slower per mile. So I was just happy to be back to my "normal" pace. Also, by holding back at the beginning, I had so much more energy throughout the entire race, instead of crashing at the end, as I've done in previous races. I was super excited that I felt so good during the whole thing! And it was a gorgeous clear day, which made the run right along the lake path very enjoyable.

It's hard to explain, but I've been struggling with running a lot lately, to the point that I was actively disliking it. But today it felt good again - and more than that, it felt fun. I got into the spirit of the race, energized by the crowd (managed some high-fives with spectators) and for once, I was able to smile for the camera at the end of the race (usually my photos just show me looking pretty unhappy!)

I'm just so happy to have another good running experience, because I was starting to think about giving it up. But that would be sad because it's such a great way to stay in shape, and I like sharing the sport with my husband. While I was running, it turned out that I wasn't even thinking about the chocolate at the end very much - thinking about the finish line, I was excited to see Steve, and hoping that he was having a good run too. And he did! He finished before me and was waiting to cheer me on just before the finish. And sharing the excitement of finishing a good race with him just totally made my day :)

The icing on the cake was of course, the chocolate. Oh, so much chocolate. I'm something of a chocoholic, and it was too much chocolate for me to finish! All runners got a tray of fondue with banana, apples, pretzels, pound cake, rice crispy treats... mmmmm. So delicious after running ~ and the fun thing is that after burning all those calories, I didn't even have to feel guilty! We also got hot chocolate (which was good because we definitely felt the cold more once we stopped running) and Ghiardelli chocolate pieces. Though I could not even touch those.. so they came home with us instead. Check it out:

All in all, it was a great race. Looks like I won't be giving up running just yet!

I must be crazy....

Forecast for tomorrow morning at 8 am: 32°F feels like 27°F.

And I'm supposed to run 9.3 miles?!

The weather in Chicago this time of year is so unpredictable...it's been an unusually warm fall until the past week. All of my long training runs were on days about 40 degrees warmer than it will be tomorrow. I'm feeling a little unprepared right now!

At least it's supposed to be sunny, and the wind is supposed to die down. I guess I will just have to visualize the chocolate at the end of the race to get me through!

Irish hand dancing

getting ready for a 15K race has meant investigating new songs for my ipod running playlist, to keep up the energy over the course of long training runs. A new favorite addition is "We no speak americano" by Yolanda Be Cool & Dcup. It is such a fun, quirky song ~ being half Italian, and having minored in Italian in college, I can't help loving the old school Italian style.. and I've always been a big techno fan so I love the remix. It's a perfect upbeat song for working out, or cleaning around the house, or if I just need a pick-me-up during a lull.

Even better is the use of the song in this video of "Irish hand dancing", by the former Riverdance wonder-duo, Suzanne Cleary & Peter Harding. It is a bit hilarious to me because as a kid, I took Irish step dancing lessons - and our teachers told us to do hand dancing like this as a way to get the dance steps ingrained in our memory. They are obviously pros with fantastic coordination, and they have mixed up traditional "steps" with some funky moves. The result is really fun to watch!



I admit I may be biased ~ with my half-Irish, half-Italian background, I find the blending of this dancing with the Italian lyrics to be a perfect combo. I am adding this video to my mental list of "things that make me smile even during a crappy day" :)

racing

Well, I did it: I ran my second half-marathon last weekend. It was a good race but it was quite challenging. I can’t help but have mixed feelings about it ~ this time around, the whole process was done in comparison with last year. It was so much hotter this year when I had to train, and I was so much busier with traveling, and I was a bit more lax about strictly following a training plan, since I’d already done one race. On the plus side, I felt much less pain following my long runs this year. And I was training at a pace about 10 – 20 seconds per mile faster than I did last year.

Unfortunately, this did not translate to a faster race time. I was actually running quite well all the way through the first 10 miles… but then I kind of sputtered out at the end. I guess I started off too fast, and also probably the disruptions to my training schedule did not help me ~ I started feeling some exhaustion around mile 10 and only managed to push myself to about 12.5 miles before I ended up walking. I knew that I was so close to the finish, but I could not find the energy inside to push on to run any more… at least not until I saw Steve at the last bend, where he so nicely came to cheer for me after he’d finished his own race. Funny how motivating it is to have that one person in the crowd cheering you on to the home stretch. Anyway it turns out that my time was 4 minutes slower than last year, but hey, at least I did it. I’m trying not to be too disappointed! I did know going in that because of all the heat and traveling and job hunting stress that my training wasn’t what it could have been, and didn’t have super high expectations.. but still, after having a better-than-expected time at the 10 mile mark, it’s hard not to be a bit bummed that the last half mile did me in.

[race number + finishers medal, along with my trusty i-pod and an extra energy gel. I'm a big fan of the extra boost from favorite tunes and gu!]

In any case, I’m still glad that I did it. And very proud of Steve for finishing his first half marathon, and at 30 seconds under his goal time no less! We celebrated with friends at a Brazilian steak house. And I have to say that I am so happy to be done with training! It was kind of stressful this year ~ again, I’m glad that I did it, because if I wasn’t registered for the race I’m sure that I would have slacked off on my exercise routine. However I find that I have absolutely zero desire to run right now. I tried today ~ and only made it one mile. Yikes! Hopefully I just need a break, and I’d like to add some new things to my exercise routine.. maybe some biking or new classes at the gym. And eventually I will get back to running, I hope.. if nothing else, Steve may have found the perfect way to motivate me to do another race ~ he found a “hot chocolate run” in November which consists of a 15K race followed by a chocolate buffet! What can I say, chocolate is my weakness… if it motivates me to run again, I’ll take it!

in the blink of an eye

Eeep. June’s almost over. Where did it go? Cue that mild feeling of panic as I realize that time is ever slipping away at seemingly exponentially faster rates.

June has been full of reminders of how time flies. Including: the 3 years of marriage we celebrated at the beginning of the month; my 29th birthday; the graduation of 2 friends who’ve been in my lab since I started grad school 6 years ago. Also, my husband was actually at home for three weeks in June, which was great… unfortunately time goes much faster when he’s around, compared with the weeks when he travels. Kinda like how the days on the weekends go so much faster than those at work.

Clearly with all this fun stuff, the month has flown by before I even realized it. The theme of the anniversary and birthday celebrations was “planning our next big adventure” ~ by way of camping gear gifts. We now have a fancy tent for two to take out on some trips that hopefully will happen at some point this summer. It is fun to dream about embarking on new wilderness adventures. I feel so lucky to be blessed with my adventurer of a husband who is also my best friend ~ discovering new parts of the world with him is one of my favorite parts of our relationship.

Along those lines, thinking on my 29th birthday, I am determined to see out my last year in my twenties with a bang. As in, time to be doing something new. No worries, the job hunt did not slow down this month: I managed to fly out to two interviews in separate parts of the country in the span of less than a week’s time. Whew. So, all that job hunting effort has been paying off. No official word on these jobs yet, but it’s been so nice to feel like there are other options out there. Both interviews involved me giving research presentations and it was great to get back into discussions of work that I had actual ownership of. And both presentations were well received, which is quite helpful for replenishing my self-esteem levels in terms of job hunting.

Both interviews were in cities that were completely new to me, which is a bit intimidating. But like I said ~ may as well go out with a bang, right? I’ll be honest, big life changes have a tendency to stress me out quite a bit, and this interview process has been no exception. But regardless of whether I get offers or decide to take them, at least I have been getting back out in the world.

Oh – and on top of everything, I am in the midst of half-marathon training again. During the month of June I have survived my 8, 9, and 10 mile training runs. This year Steve is training with me. It’s been a fun experience doing this together ~ well, we don’t actually run together as he is much faster than me. But coming back from training runs has been so much more fun; we do our cool-down walks together, gulping down Gatorade and rehashing the ups and downs of the run. And of course, the big post-shower breakfasts :) It is great to share that feeling of accomplishment.

So, it has been a jam-packed month, and now I am rather worn out. But luckily I have some vacation time coming up ~ I think that knowing there will be a bit of a break is the only thing keeping my sanity right now. However, the break will be in the form of another whirlwind adventure… life just will not slow down right now! Oh well, they say that sharing new experiences together is a great way to keep a relationship strong. I guess that with running, camping, traveling, and discussing plans for new jobs/cities, our marriage should be in decent shape!

Shamrock Shuffle'd!

Sunday dawned gray, cold, and drizzly for the Shamrock Shuffle, my first-ever 8K (~5mi) race (and just my second competitive race ever, after a half-marathon last summer). The weather was disappointing considering the near-summery weather we enjoyed all last week, which broke unfortunately just before race-day. But we sucked it up, layered on some running clothes, and headed out to join the masses running Chicago’s streets.

We knew that this would be quite an experience, as the Shuffle is a huge race, capped at 40,000 runners. But I don’t think we quite knew just what the popularity of this race meant until we ventured outside – immediately after exiting our building, we nearly ran into another girl decked out in running clothes. She noted the gear-check tag on our bag and asked if we were doing the Shuffle. So literally seconds after we made our way onto Chicago streets, we were in the company of other runners. They were everywhere! There were a number of runners waiting for the el, and more and more entered the train with every stop. It was pretty funny, early Sunday morning on what would normally be a pretty empty train, crammed in with all kinds of runners wearing funny green outfits. I imagine it was quite the spectacle for the unsuspecting non-runner commuters.

spring is coming ~ back to running!

Last weekend had a freakout moment when I realized the Shamrock Shuffle was just 2 weeks away. Oops. Hadn’t done serious running (ie, more than 2 miles) for quite awhile, but luckily the weather was great on Saturday (great as in 40 degrees and sunny) so I attempted a 4 mile run. It was hard! Ugh. I was hoping that the spinning classes I’ve been taking would keep me in decent shape, but I guess it’s not a substitute to actual running in terms of preparing for a 5 mile race. I know I can get through 5 miles, but my time may not be what I’d hoped for. Lesson: pay attention to race dates, and start training at least a month ahead!

I guess I really just am not great at running in the wintertime. Treadmill running is so boring to me, and running through cold weather and messy, snowy sidewalks is just so unappealing that I will take any excuse not to run. But going for that outdoor run on Saturday did remind me how much I liked running last summer during the half-marathon training, so I am looking forward to getting back into it, whenever the weather improves a bit more. Hard to say when that will be: March in Chicago is one of the most unpredictable months in terms of weather. It’s an emotional rollercoaster of warm sunny days ~ “it’s SPRING!!” ~ and bouts of gray, windy snow ~ “winter is never going to end!”. Because of this, I tend to be pessimistic and eliminate any expectations of good weather until at least April. But, there are some undeniable signs of spring ~ being warm enough to run outside, snow melting, longer days – it’s now light when I wake up, and light when I get home from work! And even more promising: today there’s a high of 58°F!! And the clocks change this weekend, which means it will be light out until 7! Cannot wait for some serious spring with growing things and warmer weather. In the meantime, I've got this race to force me back into some consistent running, regardless of what the weather is doing. I hope that the snow stays away at least for race day!

some small steps towards healthy goals

I’ve been feeling the need for some more exercise motivation in my life. Today I signed up for the Shamrock Shuffle 8 K in March ~

Should be interesting. It’s a huge race ~ 30,000+ runners! Steve is doing it too, which will motivate me to do some speedwork in a vain attempt to keep up with him :)

Also – I’ve been successful at cooking a bit more this week. I tend to get lazy during weeknights because it’s just me, and cooking alone seems like a lot of work since I have to do all the prep and cleanup on my own. I’m usually not in the mood for that after a long day at work. But this week I found some inspiration via a few random ingredients that made it into last week's grocery trip. My new easy, tasty, healthy meal choice: quinoa with marinara sauce and sautéed spinach. Quinoa is a hearty grain type food that cooks just like rice or pasta, so it’s really easy to make – but it has more protein and is gluten free, so it’s healthier, apparently. It’s so easy to throw in a rice cooker or pot with some water, and 10 minutes later, it’s done. It’s been a favorite since I discovered it last year, though for some reason I stopped buying it for awhile. But after making it for 2 nights this week (with leftovers for lunches!), it worked so well that I think I will be adding it back into our regular grocery list. Spinach cooked in a pan with a bit of olive oil also is super quick (easy vegetable because there’s no chopping!), and it goes really well with the marinara sauce. Seems like progress from eating popcorn for dinner :)

ten goals for twenty-ten

It’s January 11, and I’m just now writing down some goals for the year. Maybe number 1 should be “stop procrastinating”. January 1, January 11 ~ close enough. And hey today’s date is a palindrome! {01.11.10} Does that mean something? Anyway. Here are some things I’d like to work on, in addition to the procrastination thing:

Keep up my new improved level of fitness; push myself improve further by running another half marathon with updated time goal, and work on much-neglected upper body strength. Specifically my husband has challenged me to get myself to be able to do “10 in 2010” – referring to pull-ups. Yikes!! Right now I can’t do any, so this is a big challenge for me!

[one of husband's Christmas gifts this year. it's hanging on the doorway in the office, taunting me every time I walk by. good visual reminder to get myself to work out my arms...]

Eat less processed food. In other words ~ cook more! I'm really bad about this during the week... hard to find motivation to cook when it's just me.

Start a retirement account. We have lots of joint savings/investments, and my work doesn’t do any matching so I haven’t ever really felt the need to get my 403B set up. But I really need to get an account going in my own name.

[somehow a Roth IRA doesn't seem as cute!]

Get published!!!! The paper I wrote based on my master’s thesis has been “in preparation” for a year and a half now. This one is *not* the fault of my procrastination; my advisor is the one who’s been sitting on it. But I need to push him to get this submitted fast – considering I just attended a meeting where another lab is working on something really similar, I need this to get done ASAP.

Donate stuff to charity. We have lots of stuff that we don’t use any more. I should give it away to organizations that can pass it on to people who need these things.

Spend less time stressing out about how I don’t know what to do with my life or how I can possibly figure it out, and more time asking God to help me figure it out.

Keep up the good stuff from last year ~ volunteering, church women’s group, and of course, writing!

Host a party! I need to just pick a date and send out an invite. That will give me a deadline to actually do  the fun party planning stuff.

[wine and cheese party would be fun!]

Travel to a new location. This is another goal that I want to keep up every year.. like how exercise/diet always seems to show up in new year’s goals.

Finish the wedding album!! Which brings us back to procrastination, and how I need to do less of it ;)

[well I have been working on this one for awhile... turns out making my own album is pretty time consuming!]

Alright, that’s ten for twenty-ten. The engineer in me likes my goals to be really quantifiable, and I think most of these are – just a few vague ones like the processed food and stressing about the future. But you need a few of those to leave some wiggle room, right? ;) Does this sound like a plan for a good year?

Looking back: Goals for 2009

It’s the last day of the year. Looking back, I think I accomplished quite a lot in 2009. I mentioned earlier that I had come up with some goals for the year ~ “9 in 2009” sort of thing. It is kind of fun to look back and see how much I accomplished from these goals, so I thought I’d share here~

My Goals for 2009

1. exercise more ~ aiming for 3x/week.
I think that I did a pretty decent job on this one. As part of my half-marathon training, I was running 3 or 4 times a week plus doing yoga classes. So I definitely hit my 3x/week goal for a portion of the year (my training plan was 4 months long – that’s a good third of the year!). It has been harder to keep it up but I’m doing much better than I did a year ago – even during the holidays I managed to get in a couple DVD workouts and a 3 mile run on my mother-in-law’s treadmill. Of course I could always improve on consistency.. but I’m pretty happy with my accomplishments here.
 
2. start volunteering
I joined up with a fundraising planning group, “Young Professional Leadership Committee”, and served as the media chair. I was a little scared of the leadership position that I took on, as I didn’t know a whole lot about marketing etc- but I really enjoyed doing this. Our main event, a beer tasting, was really successful, raising over $40,000. I plan to continue this in 2010.
 
3. start up book club at church
I did start a book club and mintained it for about half the year. The group got a few regular attendees and we had some great discussions. Unfortunately it petered out after awhile – we had a lot of attendance issues. So I decided not to continue this fall. But, I was contacted by some other girls who wanted to start a women’s faith sharing group in October. They are in charge of running it, but I’ve been going regularly and it has been really good. I’m glad to be back into a group for talking about faith issues, and I may not have gotten to this point if I hadn’t taken the initiative to start the book club up a year ago.
 
4. make a new friend
This was just me looking for a way to get myself to be a bit more outgoing. I’ve definitely made a new good friend at work this year, as well as several other friends through the church and volunteer stuff that I’ve done.
 
5. train for 1/2 marathon
Totally did it!! Had huge doubts about this one, but it went really well. I’m so glad that I pushed myself to do this. Training helped with my exercise discipline, and running the race gave me such a huge feeling of accomplishment. 

 

 that's me in the pink running, and after I finished - for proof that I really did it :)

 

6. finish the wedding album
Unfortunately, this one did not get done. I did do some more work on it but need a lot more time for this project. On the plus side, I learned a lot of cool photo editing tricks in GIMP, which I hope to put to use to finish up this album… it seriously needs to be done considering we’ve been married for over 2 years now!
 
7. write more
Starting this blog was a way for me to address this goal. It has definitely helped me write more!

8. host a party at our place
This one is another partially finished one – we had a couple people over for a super bowl party (yay steelers!) and for an Easter brunch. But no real serious entertaining. Our place is so nice that I would love to have a bigger party.. but it ties into my difficulties with social initiative in actually inviting people over ahead of time. So this is another one to work on in 2010.

9. Take an amazing trip somewhere
This is another big success :) Week long trip to Kauai for our anniversary definitely counts as an amazing trip in my opinion.

Overall – I think I did pretty good! Last year when I set these goals, I thought some of them were a little crazy, but I’m glad I challenged myself – because now I feel like I made some worthwhile accomplishments. I will have to come up with some new ways to challenge myself for 2010!

working out in winter wonderland

On Monday, I woke up to find white stuff covering the ground.. yep, the first real snow of the winter. It was pretty enough on the trees, and new enough to give the city that cleaner look, and best of all, the Christmas lights downtown sparkle so nicely off of the snow. There wasn’t too much, so it didn’t feel inconvenient; it just seemed appropriate for the upcoming holiday season.

Yesterday, it continued snowing. It piled up a bit, and was slushy, and windy. And the forecast is not much better ~

Um, windchills of -15°? Sudden onset winter! All this makes me want to spend as little time outside as possible. I deal with this every year… but this year, I had finally established a pretty good workout schedule, thanks to training for and running a half-marathon in August. I have a bad habit of slacking off with workouts during the winter, but after getting myself into decent shape, I really want to keep it up. So now the question is, how do I motivate myself to keep working out despite miserable weather conditions outside?

Stairmasters

Last night I went to a party for the hospital employees who participated in the fundraising stair climb up the Sears tower. The stair climb was a couple weeks ago – I did it with a team of coworkers from the labs I work in. It was a fun event, and the first time I did something in a team like that. Climbing up all those 2100 stairs was definitely hard.. but felt like quite an accomplishment when I got to the top!

The really cool thing about this event was that it was for the rehabilitation hospital where I work – and in addition to the stairclimb, they also offered a hand cycle event for patients who are unable to walk up the stairs. This meant that a lot of patients were also able to participate.

I wanted to go to the party mostly for free food and drinks, as did some of the other grad students from our team… typical :) But it turned out to be even better than free dinner. The CEO played a video montage thing that included a lot of interviews with participants and what the event meant to them. It was kind of cheesy in a typical marketing way… but I have to say that it was inspiring to see so many people climbing the stairs in order to raise funds and awareness for our little hospital. I say little, because being there every day, it’s easy to forget how important it is.. but it’s the number one rehabilitation hospital in the country. And it includes a research program unmatched by other rehabilitation centers.

At this party, I learned some really random things - like how one employee from the finance department lost 40 lbs training for the stairclimb; and how the CEO finished the climb in 20 minutes, faster than all but 1 of our team members – who include some really athletic students; and how the CEO apparently likes Miley Cyrus, as she kept endorsing some song of hers about climbing a mountain.. haha. I also learned that the event raised over $600,000 to go to patient care and research. The employees accounted for over $100,000 of that, which I thought was pretty cool. Our research contingent didn’t really break any fundraising records (not that surprising considering that half the team consisted of grad students) but we did make our team goal of raising $3000. This was the first stair climb in the Sears tower, so I guess it is a pretty big deal. I’m glad it was so successful! A big thanks to all the friends/family who donated to me :)

I definitely needed the reminder of why we do the research we do, and how it ties in to the patients. The research department has a tendency to be somewhat isolated in the hospital, since many people who work in research are graduate students/post-docs/faculty who aren’t actually hospital employees. But our work does have a purpose: to find ways to better understand movement/neurological disorders in order to ultimately help improve rehabilitation medicine – and thus help all the patients that come through the hospital. These past few weeks have been filled with tedious grant submission tasks; it’s easy to lose track of why it’s important. It’s not just money we’re looking for – it’s the research questions we’re asking, and how they can help people. I’m trying to use this as inspiration to get through the rest of the week leading up to our deadline on Monday. Funny how sometimes the free food can entice you to an unexpected source of motivation, when you need it the most.

team Research at the top!