Sweet Land of Liberty...and Hotness

Happy Independence Day! I woke up about 5:30am, picked up the neighbor's newspaper to read (they're out of town, okay?), made a delicious pot of dark brewed joe, and settled down with the crossword puzzle. You can imagine how much I did not feel like torturing myself with a long hot run. I've been doing really well, and so was delighted when I decided I would take it easy today, and run/walk the trail with my camera in tow. I'm still just under two months out from the run. To my motivated strive-to-be self, that seems terribly close and reminds me how far I still have to go. To my tired and lazy self, that's a really long time to stay motivated daily...as in every single day.

Lucky for me, it happened to be the 4th of July. Old Glory was out in full force around town today. Props to Wichita Falls for showin' some Patriotic Love!

I even wore my fanny pack so I could run with my camera. Sweeeet! I'm always reminded of Seinfeld's remark, "It looks like your belt is digesting a small animal." But they sure are handy. This is where my run begins...behind the tennis courts. One of the things I love about this bike trail, is that there are always fellow extremers running or cycling, and there are ALWAYS golfers out. There's a ravine that separates the trail from the golf course. In some places the walls of the ravine are pretty steep. Guaranteed, any time of the day I'm out there, there's a golfer stomping around the ravine picking up stray and abandoned golf balls. I have a nice vantage point from the trail and can actually see a lot of the balls hiding in the tall grass. I'm waiting for the day when a golfer asks for my assistance in locating their dimpled man-treasures from across the ravine. Anyway, this trail winds around underneath the overpass in this picture. On the other side of the overpass, I'm always hit by the smell of a pungent rotten fart from the stagnant water in the ravine. This is the only spot that smells, and it usually isn't that bad on the way out. It is, however, quite awful on the way back when I'm sucking wind and desparately trying to keep moving.

A little further along the trail, there is a small grove of these tennis ball producing trees.

Now don't quote me on this, but I believe this one is a male tree.

Just past this tree grove is a nice mile long stretch of the trail. Personally, I think it's the hardest stretch to run because you can see quite clearly how close you aren't.

I've only added on the next section this week and I was so pleased to learn that:

1) There is a water fountain just before the last steep incline. God Bless you Wichita Runners Club.

2) At the top of the hill, the trail continues right alonside the lake. I did not know that. I always turned around at a particular point of the trail because I knew that the world on the other side of that last overpass was dark and scary with meth labs and needles strewn along the way.....a-hem, so wrong!

There is a private airport not far from the trail, and on the way back, I was thrilled to see an old-timey airplane performing outstanding acrobatics back and forth across the sky! When it completed a loop de loop I was so impressed that I found myself "woot-ing." I took a couple of pictures. If you'll please take out your microscope, you might be able to spot the plane in about the middle of the picture. Very exciting.

And then in my last leg, I had to stop and snap a shot at this pretty little magnolia bloom. There are magnolia trees all along the trail, but not many blooms right now. I spent the rest of the day running errands and sweating. It was hot today...hot like, wow! Case in point, while sitting at a stoplight at a busy intersection, I watched a piece of paper singe to ashes on the hot asphalt right in front of my eyes. That's hot, baby. Now I'm listening to the remainder of the day's fireworks, as I'll no doubt have to continue listening to for at least the next 2 days or however long it takes for the neighbor hoods to deplete their supply of artillery shells.

Altogether I had a glorious day.

Sign SaVvY...

Tonight at my super fun ASL sign language class at the local community college, I was very saddened to learn that Wednesday would be our last class. Our totally def (and totally deaf) ASL instructor James has completely enlightened me to the beautiful world of silent communication. This guy has a sly sense of humor like you wouldn't believe, and a big hearty laugh that you can't help but join. After only one month of classes, I can sign with a fair amount of confidence, and I find myself talking with my hands even more than I used to. Any day of the week Paisan - bring it!

James has invited our entire class to a Deaf Social next month at Atlanta Bread Company. LOVE their chicken salad sandwiches on wheat - and don't forget the pickle this time sil vous plait! That's french for please in sign language. I'm definately going to have to keep practicing so I don't sign too slowly, although James has already told us we're going to have no idea what's going on in any of the conversations (= thanks for the confidence booster). I'm pretty excited for the chance to meet some new peeps though.

If you want to know more about ASL (American Sign Language) visit the totally awesome and generous website www.aslpro.com . It's a free sign language resource website, chock full of dictionaries, quizzes, and sign language tools-a-plenty!

Wee-fit...

Okay, so back in January, I ran, okay I participated, in the Wee-Chi-Tah Trail Half Marathon. This trail run took place on the mean ass dirt bike trail that runs in and around the parks and homeless hangouts of Wichita Falls. What I didn't realize until about two miles into the run, was that by "Trail Run," they actually meant "Trail Run." This run incorporated 13.1 miles of grassy hills, dirt mounds, sink holes, suspension rope bridges, rusty nails, and a winding forrest of branches hanging down about shoulder height (but they did paint them orange so as to draw your attention to them before they knocked you on your money maker). Now, I had not physically trained for this run. Apparently you can not will yourself into shape, no matter how hard you sit and concentrate. The morning of the run, it was 28 degrees. My knees hurt, my hips hurt, and by the time I crossed the finish line (Yes I did make it, only by the grace of God and my friends Laura and Jerry encouraging me) my toes were curling inside my Nike Shox. If you're wondering how I did, the first place marathoner (two laps around the marked trail) finished about half an hour behind me. *sigh*

So, I thought it would be super fun to sign up for it again during the Hotter 'n Hell Hundred (as in 100 degrees) festivities the weekend of August 29-30. I didn't get serious about training for it until after graduation, so basically about three weeks ago. And, since I tend to comfort myself with food, I gained a nice bit of weight during my last semester so I've found myself trying to lose weight as well as get my body trained and heat acclamated. I am seeing results, but as the heat wears on, I find myself getting tired and cranky. I gave myself the day off today (except I had to go to real work after church) and I'm going to bed early so that tomorrow I can hit the weights in the morning, and then run a nice and easy five miler in the early afternoon heat. I have to admit that I do feel spectacular after a nice hot run. Crazy endorphins out the wazoo...it's about 4 hours later when I feel like taking my electric drill and lobotomizing the first annoying person who crosses my path (no I wouldn't do that)..(yes, I would).

Pimp my yard...

Josh and I bought our first home together in October of 2007 (I took this picture a little late in the day so it came out a little dark). That's a story all it's own, but we'll come back to that another time. Since I was still going to school and working, there wasn't a whole lot of time or money to spend fixing things, painting, gardening, etc. So the first thing I wanted to do after I graduated was start on the yard. All of the flower beds were completely overgrown, the bushes were rather unruly, and some of the weeds were almost as tall as me. We have a few pecan trees in our front and back yard and so some small trees had sprouted in undesireable areas. Basically, the front and back yards we left to fend for themselves....not a good thing. So I started on the front yard first. Josh trimmed and hacked the bushes and I completely cleared out three flower beds. Two in the front of the house, and one on the side. I'd forgotten how expensive it is to buy flowers, potting soil, mulch, decorative rocks...it's easy to drop $100 for just one flower bed. So I've slowly been buying plants and flowers after paydays to fill up those beds.This is the beautiful bird bath Mom and Doug bought for me. Dexter is currently enjoying it much more than the birds are. It's become his favorite evening hang out and I don't have the heart to fill it up with water yet. I'm desparately trying to keep the flowers I planted around it alive, but the heat this past week is really taking its toll.

I bought a few more front yard plants today, but I think it's definately time to get started on the back yard. Since it's already almost July, it's too damn hot to try to do too much this summer in the way of planting, but we'll give it a good start.

These are hopefully going to be mammoth sunflowers. I planted several seeds next to the house and these sprouts sprang up about a week later. I'm really excited to see if they'll make it! Grow, my pretties...grow!








This is our rock fountain in the back of the yard. See the forrest growing out of it? That's how the flower beds in the front yard used to look (only worse). So now we need to decide if we want to get a plumber over to see if the fountain would even still work, or if we want to fill it in with dirt and turn it into a cool rock planter. I'm all for the planter and I'm pretty sure Josh is too, but my mom did a good job of getting the thought in my head that maybe we should see if it's salvagable as a water fountain. It might be fun to get some cool fish to live in it. But in the mean time, it definately needs to be cleaned out. It's far from being done, but I'm going to try to journal the process of transforming the back yard into the secret garden of my dreams (or at least no more weeds)...

#7 Totally Published Research Paper

I became involved in an undergraduate research project during my junior year at MSU that resulted in a published research paper. So not only did I graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering, I also graduated a published author (co-author, actually). For this honor, MSU sent me and my two professors who co-authored the paper with me to Boston to present the paper at the ASME International Conference. It was such an amazing experience. I fell in love with Boston.

In addition to the trip to Boston, I also presented our research at the North Texas Area Student Conference - '08. For the current year, 2009, I presented another research project we had been working on at the NTASC-'09 regarding observer based control system design. This presentation was titled Lyapunov Optimizing Control with Incomplete State Availability. Following this presentation, we submitted a follow up pedagogical paper to the published paper. We have not yet heard back whether or not this paper will be published. We also hope to have another paper submitted for publishing on the topic of Integral Control. The publishing of either of these two additional papers would mean a trip for the paper presentation. Unfortunately, MSU won't be paying my way this time...but that's quite alright - Boston was the highlight of my academic career, and I was very fortunate to be a part of this research project.

#6 Mechanical Engineering Degree

After graduating in May (May 16, 2009 at 10am to be exact) of this year, I'm now an out of work Mechanical Engineer. Well, that's not exactly true, I'm still working at the same job I've had the last four years while I've been in school, so I am very fortunate in that aspect. I have yet to talk to any of my graduating classmates that have found jobs. That being said, I am so proud of the degree I've received and the hard work I put into earning it. I sacrificed quite a bit to earn this degree, and am so fortunate to have such a wonderful family that loves and supports me so much. They sacrificed so much for me too. My husband put up with me becoming a social hermit as I spent literally every spare moment studying, writing, researching, sometimes even sleeping. But I could not have made it without Josh's complete and selfless understanding. I'm a very lucky girl.

Let's get back to it...

I had originally started this blog to tell the story of my "famed" trip to Europe a few summers ago. Unfortunately, I was also trying to finish earning my degree in mechanical engineering as well as work enough to pay the bills. So, needless to say, the rest of the trip was never documented, and I'm not even sure where the disk is now with the rest of the pictures on it. I have just graduated from Midwestern State University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I am also a co-author on a published research paper. I'm now also an aunt. As you can see, there's a lot more going on here than putting off my life's blog so that I can finish recounting stories of France and Italy. I have some fab stories, for certain, and I will certainly try to continue filling them in here and there so that when I'm an old woman, I can read this and remember all the wonderful things I've seen and done. So I now declare this blog to be back in active status. I have lots and lots to go to get to 1000 so let's get back to it!!