Random Catch Up (numerical style)

One: Eric bought a new car.
A freak hail storm damaged Eric's old car, the faithful and fun Yellow Dart, to the point that it was considered totaled by the insurance company. Eric decided to part with the Dart and acquire a new vehicle. After searching online and putting in due diligence at several dealerships, Eric finally found The One. And on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, he made it his own.


It is a brand spanking new car, straight off the assembly line in the UK and only in the States for a handful of days before meeting Eric. It is a Mini Cooper Clubman S and it's amazing! Dark grey (darker even than the storm cloud grey I love on cars), with black wheels and a black room, this baby is sexy. Inside, there are several of the "mini's idiosyncrasies", which the dealership covered before Eric pulled out of the lot (wow! I was stunned. I don't know what some of the stuff in my car is after 5 years!). There are some very cool interior accent lights, visible at night, which you can change the color and intensity of. The sound system, by Bose, could literally rock your face off. ;) There is a "hidden" compartment that reminds me of James Bond's car. There is a double moonroom. That's right - double! Only the front one opens fully, but the rear one vents too. To add to it all, this car is fast, handles marvelously, and is very fun to drive (sadly, I cannot drive manual, so this is Eric's impression of driving the Mini). While I'm sad to see the Yellow Dart go....I love this new car! In fact, I kinda want a Mini now....






Two: I gave my very first seminar on my work in front of my department.
Since I already blogged about this, I'll spare you the details. But it is a minor accomplishment. I hope for all future seminars or poster presentations, I'll have more and more of my own data to talk about. And eventually I'll have to learn how to create my own figures, probably in Adobe Illustrator or something. Then I'll be so grown up! hehe!
However, I spent almost 2 weeks preparing my presentation and not doing any lab work. I'll still struggling to get back into the groove of doing lab work and getting a lot of work done (aka I haven't stopped being lazy at work yet). Oof. Maybe next week????


Three: I've made a lot (um, too many?) purchases recently.
More clothing, most of which is too nice to wear to work, where I would likely stain or tear it somehow. One of my coworkers shared a website (6pm.com) with me where I found incredible deals on two of my favorite brands, Patagonia and Fossil. I bought 3 dresses, a bracelet and earrings from the website and was thrilled! I also recently acquired: a Fossil KeyPer purse (in a print I've been obsessing over), several more printed sarongs (that I use as scarves), sandals (Target made bright orange and turquoise versions of a Steve Madden sandal I love), slightly longer but still cute Jcrew shorts, flowy Gap tank tops...and some Target tanks and tees that I can wear to work.

More makeup and beauty produces. I probably need to cut myself off in this department for a long time...
I've bought several Bare Escentuals kits, especially since many awesome kits have been on sale recently. I've bought the 3 other Eye Tutorials I didn't have (2 eyeshadows + a brush + step by step instructions showing me how to do a classic Smokey Eye, a silvery Foiled Eye or a glamorous Rocker Chic Eye). A 2 shadow + gloss kit on sale for $10! that has this awesome opalescent sheen I love. A few other shadow kits on sale. Oof. I didn't realize it was quite that much...
I've also dropped some coin in Sephora, like I usually do. Some nailpolishes, a large bottle of Josie Maran Argan Oil, more Ojon hair products, and a few products I haven't even tried yet!!! (those include Urban Decay's All Nighter makeup setting spray - I thought I'd test it out far in advance of Maureen's wedding! - as well as a Tarte lip stain). Yesterday I succumbed to another of their email promotions; I bought an Ojon hair mask online for $30 and received full size bottles of their Damage Reverse shampoo and conditioner for FREE!!!! Considering I wanted to get those anyway (for special occasion uses), I was awfully stoked.
With all these makeup purchases, I've been wearing makeup to work everyday. Something along the lines of being professional....not that my bacteria or proteins care!
I also purchased some new face/skin care products by DermaE. I've been using their Soy & Papaya Enzyme face cleanser for a month or so now and I love it. The fact that the store had the entire DermaE line on sale for 40% off prompted me to pick up some new procuts to try - a Vitamin A pore reducing mask, a fruit enzyme face scrub, a Vitamin A face scrub, a blemish spot treatment and a lip therapy with hyaluronic acid. I'm going to be beautiful!!!!

Other random things I've bought in the last few months....a paella pan, several books, discontinued body spray, huge candles, fluorescent yellow running shorts, a new pair of running shoes, a running tank top and lots of food.

Yikes! Um, enough talking about that. I feel horribly guilty right now!


Four: I've been working out (sorta) consistently!!!
For the past two weeks, I've actually gone to the gym most nights. And I did at least one workout over the weekend. That's a decent improvement from my previous stint of couch-bound laziness. And the thing is I feel awesome when I get done with my workout. So I'm trying to really stick with it and to not fall off the wagon if I miss a single day (which I have done in the past). This week I even went to a yoga class at lunch time! Hopefully I keep this up!

I also ran two races in one day last weekend. A one mile race in the morning (I ran 8:20-something, which is the fastest I can ever recall running a mile! woot!) and a 5k in the early evening (I ran much slower...). The 5k was followed by plenty of beer and yummy food, since it was a fundraiser for the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton. Eric and Manning did this event last year and raved about it, so I made sure to join them this year. I was so proud, too, that they were first and second in the race!


Five: My roommate and I are renewing the lease on our apartment for another year.
Hooray to not moving and cheap rent! Boo to the dogs in the houses/apartments around us that bark non-stop and to the crazy temperature extremes in our place! Hooray to staying with my roomie, who I have much fun with!


Six: I saw X-men: First Class with Eric and thought it was a solidly good movie.

Seven: I signed up to go to the Gibbs conference on thermodynamics in September.
Yup, a nerd convention. But I haven't been to one since before I did my qualifier (so over a year and a half ago). And this will be the first one where I get to present my own poster!!!!! Woohoo! In the grand scheme, it's a small accomplishment, but I'm still excited. It's going to be a very tough conference for me to understand what's being said, though. Thermodynamics is very mathematically based.....and my brain freaks out when it sees numbers.

Eight: There a several events in the near future that promise to be fun and relaxing.
This weekend, a cookout with my mom's side of the family. That means tons of food, good wine, and laughter. Also, my friend Megan will be in town for a few weeks before she moves to Chicago to start her job as a PT!
Next weekend is my birthday, so I'm excited for whatever I do with Eric (I asked to go out to dinner all dressed up) and with my parents. Dad is also having a family reunion, so I'll go to that for a bit and probably recognize a lot of faces I can't put names to.
The following weekend will be a birthday party with friends (well, I'm still planning it, so it's not official yet).
And the weekend after that is slated to be the Summer Beer Olympics, which are hilarious, stressful, and memorable.

I can't wait for the weekend!!!!! Why do I still have to endure Friday!??
(hmm. My boss just called a "mega-meeting" for tomorrow from lunch until whenever. He's buying food and beers, which is awesome. We're going to be talking about what he wants each of us to do in the lab and how to go about it. But the idea of a mega meeting is still intimidating...)

Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!!!!!!,

The Farthest I've Ever Run (aka my first 10k)

I'm not much of a runner. Until the last few years, running was a necessary evil I had to do each summer to prepare for soccer in the fall. And running was the punishment meted out at practice. Running was never good or fun. I would spend hours each day mentally persuading myself to go running, and more often than not, I would find some pathetic excuse to get out of running.

Upon graduating college, I wanted to change my perspective of running. I wanted to like it, to do it everyday (or almost everyday). My intent was to stay in some semblance of athletic shape. I have a huge fear of becoming a blob-shaped person. Ugggh.

I knew to make this drastic change in my mentality, I'd have to get excited about running. So I thought "I'll run races". I knew I wouldn't be fast - speed has never been present in me, despite numerous "acceleration" training camps I attended. I just wanted to finish the race, keep going farther and farther distances. Maybe even a marathon one day.... I mean, all the pictures of people who run marathons show people in pretty good shape, right? (Fact I found out later: There are people who don't look like runners who can run. Far. And fast.) Plus, as a bonus, I thought I could slim down my huge soccer legs.

Well, four years later, I'm still trying to change my mentality towards running. I openly admit I haven't spent four years consistently on this - I've taken a LOT of time off exercising (bad!) So far, I've reached the point where I know running is good for me, I want to do, I even write up basic training plans, and I can run more than I thought....but I still don't like running and have to convince myself to do it. Oops.

It doesn't exactly help that my boyfriend Eric and his friends are all runners. Compared to them, I run at an elephantine pace and I run such meager distances. Of course, they don't say that, but hearing them talking about doing an 8 mile training run at 6:30 pace.....I know where I stand.

And it's incredibly silly, but I also want to run because I don't want to be left behind by Eric and his friends. I may not run as fast or as far, but I can run too. Perhaps going out for runs at the same time can become a tradition. We've done it before - we run the first quarter mile together, then Eric peels off for another 6 miles much faster than I could imagine while I plod along 2 more miles back to the apartment. I want to have activities we can do together and I hope that this - something so important to Eric - can be one we share.

Hmmm, I went off on a tangent, didn't I? I was supposed to be telling you about the race I ran this past weekend...

There's a huge marathon (and all it's associated shorter races) here in Cincy called the Flying Pig. It's a big deal and tons of people, native or out-of-towners, participate in it. A few months ago, my mom signed me up to do the 10k race with her, which is 6.2 miles. My mom does a combination of walking and jogging, whereas I normally try to run the entire distance. (Side note: I am so incredibly proud of my mom for being physically active and for doing these races. I don't care if she walks, hops, roller skates, whatever - I'm impressed she's doing anything and doing it consistently. I want to be like that when I get older!) I wrote out a training plan where I'd run 3 days a week for a month or two in advance. Okay, I copied the exact training plan from Women's Health magazine where you only have to run 3 days a week and you'll optimize your weight loss (intervals, hills, that's where it's at!). I had my plan. And then I didn't follow it at all. Oops. I actually don't think I ran more than twice in the month prior to the race. Oops again. I was screwed.

Here's why I was panicked: I have never run more than 5 miles at a time in my life. And I've only done that 3 times (2 Turkey Trots and one random race this spring with Eric's elite running team). The last time I ran 5 miles, I wanted to collapse around mile 3. So how am I, without any training, going to run 6.2 miles?????

Certain I was doomed to fail, I set two basic goals for myself for the race:
1) Run the entire time. Not fast, but just keep running.
2) Try to finish around an hour. That would mean I was running a slow but steady 10 minute mile pace.

I woke up at 5:45am the morning of the race, and left Dayton with my parents at 6:30am. I tried to sleep a little more in the car, but never really dozed off. Mom and I hopped out of the car at a corner near Great American Ballpark, where the start line was situated. With 20 minutes to go, we joined the long line for the row of Port-a-Lets. With 5 minutes to go, we left the Port-a-Lets and attached ourselves to the back of a rather large crowd at the start line. And then....we were off!

After a quarter mile, I dashed off from mom, running, so as to meet goals 1 and 2. We wove out of downtown Cincy, crossed a bridge into Newport, Kentucky, ran along the main street in Newport, then turned around to run along a parallel street closer to the river (at this point, we passed a Hooters restaurant where I overheard some dudes say "There should totally be a beer stop here!"). We crossed another bridge, but, instead of heading back to Cincy (like I thought we were), we entered Covington, Kentucky and ran through it. I think I ran my strongest here because of all the people out on the side of the road, cheering us and playing music from their cars. I felt, as I rarely do when running, good. We crossed a bridge back into Cincy and, on that bridge, I ran faster than a train for a few minutes! (The train was only going about 2 miles per hour, but I was still faster!!!!) Then we wandered through a part of downtown Cincy, past our start line, and looped back around to finish on the other side of Great American Ballpark. The last mile was hard for me. I kept setting small goals - catch that person in the yellow shirt, okay now catch the lady in the blue shorts. And on each of the hills on the course, I repeated in my head "crush that hill, crush that hill". I did NOT want to walk! I wanted to meet my goals. I kicked as hard as I could when I saw that "Finish Swine". And I crossed it, head down and chugging along, at 1 hour and 2 minutes! Woooohoooooo!!!!

It was the farthest I've ever run, and I did it! I even have a medal with a pig (turn it over to see its bum!) to prove it!

Now I need to get on my training plan.... I can run some more races up in Dayton to get participation points for Eric's elite team. And hopefully I can get into better shape. And maybe, just maybe, I can start to want to run :) It's gotta be a positive feedback loop, right?