Tuesday, March 15, 2005


Honestly, they do this on their own. And yes, my dog is wearing another dork sweater. That one is from Old Navy and it's his favorite.  Posted by Hello

Monday, March 14, 2005

OK, so as you have no doubt noticed by now, I have finally started using Hello to post pictures to my blog. Which is really neat and fun, but they're posting as posts, and I think I'd rather have them in the margin somewhere. Unfortunately, I am a klutz with all object-oriented languages, so trying to work out the html to get a separate column in my blog that only posts pictures will be a chore that I'm probably too lazy to take on.

Since my blog automatically archives, I guess I'll just have to keep my pictures up-to-date! That's probably a good idea anyway.

We had a fun weekend. SNG and I are starting to feel guilty about having such nice weekends during lent. Maybe we should drive up to Erie next weekend for penance. I am sure I just jinxed us really bad there. Anyway, we went on the frosty 50 ride Saturday and it wasn't frosty at all. But it was very very windy. The kind of thing where you ride along nestled as close as possible to the rear wheel of the rider in front of you, wheezing for breath, and look down to find you're going 13 mph.

And on the way back-- everyone is gunning down the road at 23 mph with the wind at our backs, one guy empties his bottle on the ground just before the last hill of the ride and there's a mad dash for the bike shop. At that point everyone has forgotten that there ever was a headwind.

We did some shopping later and bought a new George. We got the "next generation" one with the removable grill plates. The old miniGeorge is going to Goodwill. For fun we grilled all the vegetables that could be balanced on the grill plates without rolling off and then we grilled some wet paper towels, our fingers, whatever we could find. A good time all around.

Sunday we took an easy trail ride with some friends who are going on the Montreal trip this summer. We watched the water in Umstead park. We passed a lot of horses. And horsepoo. And afterwards we went swimming, but not serious swimming. More like put-on-the-fins-and-see-how-fast-you-can-get-across-the-pool swimming. And practice-walking-handstands-up-&-down-the-lane swimming.

In other words, we didn't do anything responsible at all. Yay!

Look at these cool guys I found in France. Posted by Hello

SNG on a mountain top in Colorado Posted by Hello

Don't eat yellow snow, Goofch! (Yup, he's wearing a sweater. My dog is a dork.) Posted by Hello

Modean is hunting for mice in the snow. Posted by Hello

This was a big, tasty ham, egg, & cheese crepe in Avignon. Yes, I ate the WHOLE THING!  Posted by Hello

I just figured out how to add pictures to my blog. So now I'm going to have fun adding pictures.  Posted by Hello

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Three weeks in a row on the road. In short: Big city good, Small city bad, Small city good. I'll exapnd on this later.

I'm in the office this week and next, which of course means that everyone has dibs on my time. And all that stuff I should be working on when I'm in the office? Yeah, that's on hold until everyone and their lawnboy has a conference call with me first. Why oh why do I need to be on these conference calls that actually have nothing to do with me? I think it's because when someone sets up a conference call, they try to add as many people to it as possible so that they feel like it's a really important call. Because everything they do must be really important to everyone else, right?

Hey, Cat's been out of the office for 3 weeks. She's here this week- let's get her in on a conference call!
Yeah! Good idea! She'll be glad to be kept in the loop!

One of the best things about being home is that I can eat home-cooked food. I am so tired of beef and black olives (long story). I spend the first few days after I got home bloated like a salted slug from all the beef and black olives and MSG-saturated restaurant food. No kidding, my weight dropped 3 pounds in 4 days after I got home.

I'll tell you about the trips...
First, I spent a week in Manhattan. Which was terrific. I was traveling with a colleague who happens to be a dear friend, so I had someone to go and do stuff with every evening. We went shopping in all those little la-de-da boutiques that I'd never venture into alone. I played with Pucci shoes and scarves, we laughed at a $3000 pair of Gucci granny-panties, we saw just how ugly Stella McCartney's animal-friendly fashions can be (pictures don't fully convey the fug-factor here), we got dirty looks from security guards hovering around the J-Lo collection at Saks (which were deserved, since we were kind of talking trash about the ugly clothes...).

We saw The Gates. Orange. Shower curtains. A lot of them. The same color as construction cones. Enough said.

We went to some really good restaurants for dinner, including a thai-fusion place called Vong, a brasilian hole in the wall called Ipanema (get whatever the waiter recommends, but skip the paella), and L'Ecole, the restaurant associated with the French Culinary Institute, one of Jaques Pepin's little projects. Basically, you eat the homework. Four courses, all outstanding. That dinner, we were joined by my cousin Cosmopolitan and got to catch up on things in her life. My favorite place to visit is wherever I have family. I have a lot of family, but too few of them live in places where my job sends me. Hey, can someone move to Minneapolis, or maybe Denver, please?

But all good things must end. It is Lent, time to sacrifice and atone for sins. So I went to Erie, PA. Have I not suffered enough? Please oh please don't ever make me go to Erie again, Dreary Erie, Land of Great Sadness, Frozen Core of Hell's Misery. All the local restaurants specialized in local cuisine-- Frozen Vegetables. All the people specialize in the local pasttime-- Cold Stares.

If I get assigned to Erie again, I will start updating my resume.

I can't talk about it anymore, it's too painful.

After Erie, I flew to Lubbock. Lubbock, where there's something interesting behind every tree. I was there the better part of 5 days and kind of dreading it, since Lubbock has a pretty lame repuation among Texans-- it's out in the West where there's nothing but dust, tumbleweed, cattle, and Cadillacs. It's so flat that you actually can fall off the edge. It's so desolate that wind doesn't even slow down as it passes through. This is the birthplace of the Tornado Cannon, which is used to shoot 2x4's through brick walls to simulate tornado debris. I'm not joking.

Believe it or not, I had a terrific time. The restaurants were good, the students in my class were fun to go out with, and I had 2 friends who came to town to attend the class. I guess the worst thing about it was that I ate alot of the local cuisine-- beef. You can't get much to eat other than beef in Lubbock. Their veggies are very good. Their seafood is older than my shoes. Chicken? They don't go in for that sort of PETA-vegetarian-pinko food. So I had Steak. Steak Steak and Brisket. And Ribs. And some more Steak. And ranchero sauce. With black olives on top. Of everything.

Hence the salted slug.

After this brief hiatus at home, I'll be going to Milwaukee for a week. Never been there. Not really excited about it, but I'm keeping an open mind. Hey, why don't any of my family live in Milwaukee?

What kind of food do they eat in Milwaukee?

Tuesday, March 8, 2005

*for anyone waiting on a normal post, that's coming soon. This was a recreation/fitness post I started a few weeks ago and just never finished*

I've been on a bike for a long time, to say the least. My dad is one of those dads who always wanted to give us bikes for Christmas and birthdays, and he had a tandem, which meant we could go riding after school and I wouldn't have to work as hard as if I was on my own (hee!). And I could postpone homework for just a little longer.

There were a few years in high school when a car superceded a bicycle on all counts, but living in a little college town rekindled the velo-love pretty quickly. I've played for both teams (mountain vs road biking) and am currently in a road-biking phase that has lasted about the last 6 years.

There are other sports I love (none of them involving a ball or a team strategy, BTW), and then there are the sports that I mostly do for the exercise, because they support my other sports: running and swimming.

In the summer of '97 or '98 (can't recall) I ganked up my ankle pretty badly after teaching high-impact aerobics 6 times a week for a few months. I didn't have fellowship money that summer, and I needed the extra income, what can I say. The sports med guy at the university health care center sent me to physical therapy- I had the therapist who takes care of all the women's athletics for the university. He was really good. In our first meeting, I asked him, "so doc, will I be able to run a 10K when we're finished?" and he says "Sure, I don't see why not!" and I say "Great 'cause I never could before!" (heehee, it really was almost like that). See, back in high school I ganked the same foot and it never quite healed right, and as a result I was unable to run. Literally. A block or 2, and then I was crippled with pain for the next few days. So when this PT guy says he'll get me running, I didn't believe him. But he did it. So I learned to run. I still don't like it, but the worse you are at something, the better the exercise, right?

I was always trying to find things to do outside of my graduate department- with only 10 people, you need a break from each other now and then- so the next year I took a few semesters of swimming stroke technique classes. For somebody who grew up waterskiing and fishing, I am an abysmal swimmer. The classes helped- I learned some formal strokes, I learned how to breathe properly, how to get a little bit faster, how to turn, all that good stuff.

For several years I've been thinking, "I could do a triathlon, something small like the Danskin" but I never quite got up the nerve to do it.

Until now.

I've registered for the White Lake sprint triathlon. OK, it isn't Ironman. It is a 750 m swim, a 17 mi bike ride (totally flat land) and a 5K run. It's only about 2 hours, but I am still pretty excited about it. And nervous. My "real" triathlete friends laugh at my little sprint-triathlon, but I just judo-throw them until they apologize for making fun...

So I've been swimming and running a lot more than usual lately. Maybe this time next year I'll do a big-kids triathlon. Or maybe the sprint will just kick my ass so hard that I'll never do another tri again. Or maybe I'll drown during the 750m open swim.

Or maybe I won't finish in the 2hr15min time limit and will be pulled off the course sometime halfway through the run, along with the other pathetic people who have no business doing triathlons.

Did you see that? From excited to pulled-off-the-track in 2 paragraphs!

Anyway, when you're a novice, and a woman, they let you (okay, the require that you) wear a pink swim cap during the swim. I might just have to sew little plastic daisies onto mine, just for a little style.

Anyway, so that's the latest on the recreational scene. In biking news, we've been doing more 50-mile rides on the weekends, and I think it's about time we started doing a 50 + a 70-80 mile ride some weekends. Especially since it's getting to be Spring, and for the MS150 this year SNG & I want to do the double century.

Monday, February 14, 2005

HAPPY V-D DAY!! (heehee! that one is so Beavis & Butthead but in 7th grade, I tell you, nothing funnier)

What a great excuse to get flowers at work. :-) And it's funny to see the guy in the office next door get all bent-out-of-shape because SNG "makes him look bad."

SNG always make me smile. So do flowers. Tonight I'm bringing a bag of goodies for the divas in my aerobics class. There are pink Hershey's kisses, little plastic heart-shaped rings, and heart-shaped plastic pendants with bubble-wands inside. Something for everybody, but I better set a rule of no bubble-making in class or else we'll end up with slipping-flying-super-gliding divas.

I lurve all my divas, and don't want to see them fly.

ON TO OTHER STUFF, I did an all-day aerobics workshop Saturday for CEU credits. These things are so funny. I never learn much in them, but I get to meet some extraordinarily dim-witted people. Case in point:

Case Study #48, Advanced Math Concepts in Aerobics
CEU Class Instructor: So, if you want to count the beats per minute [BPMs] for a song, tap out the rhythm for 10 seconds. Then multiply that number by 6. That gives you the approximate BPMs for that song. This will help you in planning what kind of choreography to use for that song.

Particiapant Aerobics Instructor Colleague 48: Well, OK, but I took a workshop a few months ago, and THEY said that if you want to get the BPMs that you should count for 15 seconds! Well, which is right? What is the industry standard?

CEU C.I.: .... um ... you get to the same number either way, so you can do what's...

PAIC48: well, I'm just saying, which one is better?

Alphagal: (eyebrows up, jaw down, unable to grasp that this conversation is happening)

CEU C.I.: Yeah, I can see your point, if you're like, Wow, multiplying by 6 is really hard in my head, but multiplying by 4 is easy, I would just use 15 seconds. If you're like, Multiplying by 4 is hard but adding a zero to the number is easy, then, like, count for 6 seconds. You can do what is easier for you.

Alphagal: (smirk, snarky chuckle)

NEVER let it be said that you don't need madskillz in math to be an aerobics instructor!

Anyway, so 8 hours and 2 indoor cycle group workouts later, I had earned my 5 CEU credits. Ten to go for the year. Wheeeee!

Sunday SNG and I biked and swam, then we shopped. Then Dianaverse came over to make Valentine's cookies for the dogs. The dogs love them, especially because they are pink and heart-shaped. SNG lit a fire in the backyard firepit and we put a big marinated turkey breast in the dutch oven with some olive oil and veggies and let it slow cook for a few hours. YUM.

Tomorrow: off to New York. I'll get to see that exhibit in Central Park everyone is excited about.

Friday, February 4, 2005

I'm glad to be home from R'ville. More importantly, I'm glad that I don't have someone nose-mining from across my desk here in my office.


Super Bowl Sunday is this weekend! I'm not completely sure who is playing, but I know what Super Bowl means:


Super Bowl of chips, Super Bowl of cookies, Super Bowl of salsa, guacamole, and queso, Super Bowl of Tastykakes at my friend MLP's Super Bowl party. Yay!


Super Bowl means getting to party with a bunch of people drunker than I am, who cheer and yell every time someone moves on the football field (which isn't all that often, come to think of it). Yay!


Super Bowl means funny commercials during the game that I will grow to hate after seeing them in abbreviated form repeatedly for 3-6 months *after* the game is over. Yay!


Super Bowl means SNG won't waste my Sunday afternoons watching football again until August or September! Yay!


I'm rooting for the Longhorns to win, just for the record. HOOK'EM!!


Wednesday, February 2, 2005

I'm teaching, I feel kinda cruddy (something I ate?) and one of my students won't stop picking his nose. Why do I always get these?? A few months ago, I took a poll of my coworkers, and they all claimed that this doesn't happen in their classes. I get one of these about every 2-3 classes I teach.


PLEASE STOP, I CAN SEE YOU.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Dear Mother Nature,

OKAY, OKAY, we're SORRY we had lovely, upper-70s weather in early January. Can you PLEASE STOP the cold now??? Haven't we atoned for our sins enough already?? It's cold ALL THE TIME!

Love,

The Joggers, Bikers, and Dog-Walkers of Raleigh, NC


PS- feel free to bring back some of the nice cold in July and August.