Office party warnings...

G.O.B.: "Please refrain from discussing or engaging in any sort of interoffice [bleep]ing or [bleep]ing or finger [bleep] or [bleep]sting or [bleep]ing or even [bleep]. Even though so many people in this office are begging for it..."

5200 yards!

I swam 5200 yards today! That is farthest I've ever swum in one workout in my life! I started out with some long distance freestyle and then moved on to some IM stuff and then finished up with some more freestyle. When I got into the pool, I planned to do 4000 yds but then I was like, hey, I can do 4500. When I got to 4500 yds, I realized I could do 5000, so I did! The last 200 was just a warm-down.

AD (after death)

Lucille: What's a Forget-Me-Now?
GOB: They're pills that create a sort of temporary forgettingness. So if somebody finds out how you do a trick, you just give 'em one of these, and they forget the whole thing. It's a mainstay of the magician's toolkit, like how clowns always have a rag soaked in ether.
Tobias: Gob, this is Flunitrazepam. It's a roofie.
Lucille: Those are illegal.
GOB: Shut up, Mom. Don't make me give you another one of these.

Arrested Development - yay!

Arrested Development fucking rocks! Why is show not on the air anymore?!

Tobias: well yes, but i’m afraid i prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run, if you will, so now i’m afraid i have something of a mess on my hands.
Michael: there are just so many poorly chosen words in that sentence.

I have cool friends who are in bands

So I now have links to websites for my friends' bands on the sidebar. Yay.
Victim Nation includes Clint, who is a friend of mine from college (my 1st college). We lived on the same floor of the dorms. What fond memories...
Electric Vagina is includes some friends of mine from high school. That's right, I even had cool friends back in high school.

Victim Nation played last night at 12 Galaxies in the mission. Good times.
This Saturday night, Electric Vagina is playing at 12 Galaxies. They're supposed to go on ~11 or 11:30. I'll be there...

Lichen collecting (and swimming)

Who knew there were so many different types of lichen? We went lichen collecting (with a permit, of course) yesterday and then worked on identifying genera and species. I had no idea there was so much variety in the world of lichen. And the books that are published on it, well, I guess that means that people have devoted their lives to lichens. Wow.

I swam long course this morning for the first time ever (yeah, I was a long-course virgin...) and it was tough! I never realized how much umph you get from pushing off the wall every 25 yds instead of every 50 yds. Who knew? I did make it 3000 yds, though. It felt a lot like open water - good training for Berryessa. And, incidently, I registered for the 2 mile swim at Lake Berryessa. Was that really a good idea? I think it'll take me ~1 hour to swim 2 miles open water. Yikes! My first 2 mile swim in open water. What if I get hungry?

Speaking of swimming, I swam at the Pacific Masters Swimming Championships this past weekend in Pleasanton. Actually, I only swam one of the days, which ended up being good because I was sick with a nasty cold. You wouldn't think it would make a difference, but my times sucked so I'm going to pretend it made a big difference. I swam the 1650 free and 200 free and swam in an 800 free relay. The rest of my relay team was a lot faster than me so I felt sort of bad slowing them down. We wanted to get under 9:00 and guess what our time was? 9:00.99 Damn! So close.
Here's the story: So, I swam the 1650 and I felt pretty strong (except for the cold, which was f-ing up my respiratory system) and I swam hard pretty much for the whole 1650 yds. Then I got to rest for a sold 2 hrs or so while they went through all the men's 1650 heats. After that long rest, I thought I would feel pretty good during the relay swim. Not so. I dove in and right off began freaking out that I had false started, that I hadn't waited for the swimmer ahead of me to touch the wall. In spite of the worries, I pushed and felt great for the first 50 yds. After those 50 yds, I just about died. My arms felt like lead and all I could think was oh shit, I 've still got 150 yds left! Crap! I was dying for those last 150 yds and that's why we didn't break 9:00. Oh well.
After that disaster, I had to swim my individual 200 free. My arms were like lead. I didn't even feel good for the first 50 yds. I was swimming right with the women on either side of me until the last 25 yds. At that point, they both kicked it into gear and sped off and I was left eating dust, or bubbles rather.

Hey, look, that's me with red hair! I want to dye my hair red again but I'm not sure if I can. I don't think my students would care but what about my bosses?

Glad that's over.

What a week! My sister was in the hospital with sepsis. She started going into septic shock! After a few days in the ICU, she's doing okay. It's just scary to think what would happen if she hadn't gone to the hospital. But she's okay now. Its just so stressful spending so much time at the hosptial. But it could have been so much worse... Now I'm just exhausted. Its always like this when she's in the hosptial. I'm okay while she's in there (because you have to be) but then when its all over, I'm so tired!

And I haven't swam in over a week! I'm going tomorrow morning, really. Really. I know once I get in the pool, I'll be happy with myself, but getting out of bed is such a challenge!

In other exciting news, I finally got my wireless internet card working! I had to dig out the original cd since I was unable to figure out how to download the driver from the website. But anyway, I have the driver, all is well, and it works! Which means I can retreat to the one room in our apartment that has a working heater (the bedroom) and hole up in there to go online and waste a lot of time. Goody.

I'm planning to go climbing tomorrow night. I hope my knee holds up. It was fine swimming yesterday and carrying all those heavy boxes on Sunday so hopefully it will be okay. It doesn't seem to be swollen. I guess I just have to be careful. Use more arms and less legs, which means I'll get tired very quickly. Hopefully be able to do some leading...

writing exams sucks

I'm trying to write an exam for my intro bio class but its not really going so well. In fact, I haven't even really started it. Hmmm... Hence, me writing a post, something I haven't done in a while.

Last Saturday was so nice; the weather was great! Mike and I had a nice picnic at Ocean Beach and watched dogs frolic in the waves. Children, too. For some reason kids don't care if the water is artic, which it definitely was - they'll go in anyway. They were building a sandcastle and one kid was just lolling about in the sand. That's another thing - kids just don't care about getting sand in their ears and scalp. Some other kids were digging a hole. I thought about why you dig holes at the beach and could come up with no good reason. Because you can? I guess its just one of those things you do when you go to the beach: you build a sandcastle, dig a hole, dance away from the waves, take a nap, read a book and eat some good snacks. Simple, yet rewarding. We did only the last few because, let's face it, we're too lazy to dig. Our picnic ended when the wind started. Bizzare how nice it was one minute and then a positive sandstorm the next. Good time to pack up, go home and take another nap.

On Sunday I went to the Solano Stroll to sit at the swim team booth and try to recruit new members. There were a few interested folks, but most were like, SCAM? What's that? And we explained it was an adult swim team and then they would shake their heads, no, no I don't swim.

So, inspired by other members of the swim team who swim more often than I, I got up and made it to practice on Monday morning. Main set: 15 x 100 IMs on decending intervals. Yikes! Actually, I made it okay because the early intervals were nice and long (lots of rest.) Only the last few were a bit of a stretch. Its so desperately hard to get out of bed, even though I know I'll thank myself (unless its some sort of hellish, all-breaststroke day.)

And the Hitchhiker's Guide dvd comes out soon (or is out now?) Yay!

O, test prep, make me smart.

Okay, I've got do some studying for this test-prep teaching. Oh its so boring, though! Oh I don't want to teach test prep, but I need some money! Its one of these big test-prep companies (shall remain nameless) and some of the stuff in the teacher manual is so stupid! It talks about the test prep class being "a delight" for the students. Ummm. Test prep? Delightful? Oh, I can't read anymore of it. Ugh!

Its just a degree!

I feel like I don't really have much to blog about since I've sort of made peace w/ quitting grad school. Well, mostly I'm at peace. I sometimes still feel this stab in my chest. Like when I meet someone and find out that they have a PhD and then I feel this stab in my chest, like I'm inferior and I always will be, like I'm just not as important. I know that's all a load of crap, in my head I know that, but in my soul I still feel it. I know I'm not inferior because I don't have a doctorate, but this plan of having a PhD has been with me for so long. I can't even remember when I made these plans but it was the begining of college, at least. I guess I've made this degree a such a part of who I am that giving it up feels like giving up part of me. Which is totally insane, I realize that. Its just a degree. Its just a degree! I don't want all those PhD's to think less of me because I don't have one too. I think part of this is that I'm too worried about what others will think about me but the other part is that I think I'm inferior for not having a doctorate. I really need to get over both so I can truly feel at peace.

Who are you people?!

I've been invaded by adware! Who are the fuckers who write that software?! Horrible, souless, evil bastards! That shit is killing me! I have now wasted a lot time downloading and fucking around with all these anti-spyware programs and if anyone has any good ideas about how to get rid of this shit, help me out. (It's nice how I pretend that other people read this when in reality I know no one reads but me.)