Happy Birthday

It is Beck's birthday.

Yay!

I know it's not Monday

Don't worry. Monday is already taken care of. This is just something I wanted to share today.


Conchita, Nada que perder






Something about this song really moves me. I like it.



me

Running Journal

What to write? This journaling is annoying. A little more guidance would be nice. At least it gives me something to blog about. The only problem is that I don't want this blog to turn into me just talking about working out all the time. I am way more complex, way more sentimental than that. So keep your Kleenex handy, folks.

Okay, the running journal: Today I went 2 miles in approximately 15 minutes. I am a little annoyed at the lack of a consistent routine – every class we do something different. Today the workout started with a one lap walk. I didn't participate. I had just walked over there from where I work on campus and I don't really think of walking a lap in 25 degree weather as a "warm up". I filled my water bottle with hot water and put my stuff in a locker in the men's locker room and then I started my jog. A good slow jog is a better warm up (in my opinion) than a freeze-your-ass-off walk.

I felt really good. My lungs hurt from the cold during the first mile but they were with me during the whole run (usually my lungs try to quit before the rest of me is ready to stop). My legs felt fresh, not heavy. My back didn't feel too tight. I felt really good today.

--me

Weird

This is not a look-at-me post; I am not bragging or boasting; and I admit a certain degree of narcissism (show me somebody who isn't vain). The motive behind what I am sharing now is just that - sharing.
What happened to me today at the gym was weird. But first, let me just say that I am VERY comfortable in my own skin. I don't diet and I won't diet. I work out and I enjoy working out but I don't live in a gym like some people. I have always had a very stable weight - since I left boot camp over ten years ago I have hovered around 180 lbs plus or minus 5 lbs. I have had the same size waist since my sophomore year in high school - about 32" max. I don't lose too much weight when I am not in the gym and I never, never gain weight by eating too much. I can gain weight when I am lifting weights regularly but I have absolutely no understanding of what it is to gain unwanted pounds. I cannot empathize with overweight people. I don't know what it is like to be overweight. I admit that I don't like it and I think that a lot of it has to do with lifestyle. I am very active. It is part of who I am. All the same, I recognize that I have been blessed physically - I got my mom's slender build and my dad's strength (thank you both).
In the gym, I am the guy that a lot of people envy: the big strong guys who work out to lose weight think I have got what they want and I am just big enough and strong enough to fall outside the 'too skinny' classification so even a lot of the skinny guys are trying to get to where I am (even if they only see it as one rung on the ladder they want to climb and not the final destination). There are always gym rats - they are not the people I am talking about though. When I say "a lot of people..." I am referring to the regular guys. I consider myself a regular guy and not a gym rat.
Don't misunderstand - I am not bragging. However, I won't diminish the truth in order to obtain some false sense of modesty either - that is not my style. So - now to what happened at the gym today:
I was there working out with two co-workers - a guy and a girl, two people I really enjoy being around. The girl is trying to gain weight and the guy is trying to tighten some things up and get stronger. Honestly, I think that he has the potential to get huge, that is the build he has. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, she has a real uphill battle ahead to gain the weight she wants. Bigger people may not understand, but I think that really skinny people have a harder time getting where they want to be in the gym. The reasons all come to diet. Bigger people can diet and work out and reasonably expect to lose weight if they are consistent and honest with what they do. The skinny people, in the mean time, who don't gain weight no matter how much they pig out have a very hard time because to gain healthy weight they have to be as active or more active than usual - which doesn't seem logically to lead to weight gain - and they have to do what already doesn't put pounds on their bodies - eat a lot.
Anyway, the girl was checking her stomach in the mirror and I lifted my shirt only a few inches to see myself in the mirror. It was not more than a second! As soon as I lifted my shirt this guy who I didn't even see in the gym calls out "I want that." Definitely talking to me/about me, and not to the girl I was working out with.
First thought that crosses my mind: Weird! It wasn't just some dude flirting with me. As weird as that would be, that would be less weird that this guy. After his little burst of enthusiasm, he comes straight over to me - definitely entering my comfort zone - and says to me "How can I get that?" Again, if this was a gay come on, I totally missed it (otherwise... - you pay for dinner... who knows, it might be a heck of a lot easier to 'get that' than you might guess). This time when he asked me how to get my stomach, he lifted his shirt as if I could somehow put a magic stethoscope on his belly and diagnose it right there. What am I, a cross between Richard Simmons and Dr. House? (That might give me nightmares!) It is not even like the guy was in really bad shape, he just has a bit of a beer gut. (But when I flex you can see the eight pack).
I told him that to get the lower abs cut that he was envying he needed to run (not jog). He asked if just dieting would do it. Isn't that just typical!? Everybody wants a runner's body - a runner's legs, butt, and stomach - but nobody wants to do that sort of work. To quote Ronnie Coleman, a former Mr. Olympia, "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder but nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight."
Anyway, the whole thing seemed to be pretty weird to me, but then again, I have never been in that guy's skin.

me

Running Journal

Well, I don't really want to be doing this running journal right now. I just got done running. It is raining today so we didn't go outside to run. I really like having this class. I know that last time I complained about the lunges but even after that I did a pretty heavy leg workout with the weights on Friday. I am really enjoying the part of this jogging class that is not jogging. We do some strengthening exercises every class and we have done some basic Yoga stretches each time as well. I really like it. Today we stayed in and ran around the basketball court. We did one lap and then stairs followed by two laps and stairs, three laps and stairs, etc. – for 15 minutes or so. I started out with a pretty fast pace and I think that I was working on the nine laps set when we finished. I felt strong, fast, and healthy today. Since the New Year I have had very little soda to drink. It wasn't really a resolution; I think that it may have been a resolution that B. made. I really have no idea. If it was I don't know how she is doing with it either. So… not much soda (not much sugar, period), plain oats and milk everyday for breakfast, lots of workouts, lots of protein…. I think that I will be looking good for summer. I also think that I will be running a sub-24 minute 5K before the end the semester. We will see. I went to run a 5K race this weekend but I was confused about the start time and the location and I ended up missing it. I go there right after the runners started. I was able to see the leaders at the 2 mile mark and, truthfully, I think that I could have been there with them. The leaders' times at 2 miles was about 13 minutes. Anyway, that gives me a lot of confidence. We will see where I am and how humbled I am after I actually show up to run on time. Really, I am not trying to sound boastful.

So, today was a good run – good breathing, good sweat, and my legs and chest felt pretty solid today. And the weather indoors was pretty nice.

--me

Monday's Music

Today, we are going to travel. Don't worry, we are still sticking with English for now.
First, a question: How many of you are claustrophobic? I am not, but I imagine that it is a feeling like the world getting too small to live in. Sometimes in life things happen that make this planet smaller. When violence steals great beauty from the world it gets smaller. This happened in Pakistan in 2005 when Taliban militants destroyed many ancient Buddhist and Hindu statues. Something like this also happened in a way that touches us here a lot more personally - when John Lennon was gunned down in 1980 on his way home from the studio. There are many great artists in the world who make this planet easier to live on, but among artists John Lennon was part of a special class.
Less well known, but equally tragic is the case of Lucky Dube (pronounced Doobay). He was South Africa's best selling Reggae singer of all time. Contrary to the image that many people have of Reggae, he did not use drugs, drink, or smoke. His music is driven by a belief in peace and unity. In many of his songs, he sings about the need to work together, the need for education, above all he sings about love - in all of its forms.
Lucky Dube is his given name; it has no connection to marijuana. I read somewhere that he was not named for several months after he was born because his mother had suffered several unsuccessful pregnancies and thought that he would die as well. When he did not die in early infancy his mother named him Lucky. Lucky Dube was shot dead by carjackers in 2007 after taking some of his children to a relative's house. Senseless. And the whole world lost something good. If you are interested in hearing part of an interview by Lucky Dube, you can check it out HERE.

Love is the answer... so keep on playing those mind games together.
--John Lennon, Mind Games




"...yeah, we're playing those mind games forever.... faith in the future... out of the now"


Lucky Dube, I Want To Know What Love Is
I know that this is a cover, but couldn't find the video that I wanted to share (Sometimes I Cry), and I think that this captures his particular sound very well.



If you like this, listen to this as well: God Bless the Women.
Enjoy,
me

Blue's Clues...

Okay, a while back I said that I was going to make this post. Here it is. I got a video - it is much easier than writing. First, a little background. You know how after a shower or a hot bath if you touch a mirror or glass the moisture that has soaked into your hands will make a steamy sort of a hand print. Well, Gabe really likes "a clue, a clue" from Blue's Clues - I mean for a while everywhere we went we had to make clues. Most of the time this was done with paper and ink but then one day when I took him out of the tub I stuck his hand on the mirror to make a "clue." Since then that has become a ritual, but it is a ritual that has evolved. Previously, I wrote about his penis obsession... well, it has come to affect his clue making as well.
See for yourself:


me

Technical difficulties

I somehow lost the first entry in my "Running Journal," the one that said it was for Tuesday and Wednesday. I was using Microsoft Word to post the journal entries and somehow when I posted the new entry it replaced the previous entry. It is lost to me completely. I don't know if there is anybody out there who gets an RSS feed of my blog that might be able to help me out (actually I know that there are 8 people who subscribe to my blog feed - thanks to Google Reader). If you do get a feed of this it is possible that your feed saved both versions. It is also possible that it didn't. Anyway, if you still have a copy of the first Running Journal entry, can you send it to me either in my email if you have that or in the comments? It might be better if you can check that before refreshing the feed or doing a send/receive.
I hope that I am not asking too much. Really, I doubt that any of you have this but it would save me a little bit of work of trying to recreate the post (not for the blog's sake, but for the class' sake).
Thanks,
me

Running Journal, Thursday 1/22/09

Okay, I just got out of the jogging class and here are my thoughts: WTF!!

The teacher had us start the class with a little bit of stretching and then we went out to the track and did 200 meters of lunges. WTF is that about!? This is the second day of actual work outs. Never, not on any team I have ever been on, did I have to do 200 meters of lunges. Okay, really I don't mind. It is hard and most of the students' form was not very good but what I am used to doing is several sets of 10 to 15 yards. I think that would much more reasonable but I am a student in the class, not a teacher.

After the torture of the lunges we did some running. I don't know how long we were supposed to run. I ran 6 laps. I felt slow at the start (could it be the lunges?) and at 4 laps my legs felt really heavy so I stopped and drank some water. In the fifth lap I started to loosen up and I felt really good. I had a very strong sixth lap and while I was doing the sixth lap the class went to field in the center of the track and began doing stretching. We ended the class with about twenty minutes of stretching and a few minutes in Yoga's corpse pose. I felt like my pace overall was faster than on Tuesday but I also didn't run as far. If I run in a 5K this weekend (I am actually planning on this), I think that I would have to keep my pace somewhat slower to be able to finish. I think that pushing myself right now I could run a 24 min 5K but I feel like starting out with a 30 min pace will be better and then deciding if I want to speed things up after half way. Truthfully, I just don't think I have the lungs for a 24 min time at that distance right now.

It feels good to breath. My legs are responding to the work outs already. I feel a greater fullness in my quads and in my lower abs. I know that that sounds funny but I have enough experience working out to be aware of those things – that, and the fact that it is my own body I am talking about.

Alright, I have to run now (pun intended). I have to do some work for Portuguese.

me

The Man...

*... is watching you!*
I use sitemeter to track visits to my blog. Here is what came today:

Visit Detail
senate.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP
Address
156.33.57.#
(U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms)
ISP
U.S.
Senate Sergeant at Arms
Location
District of
Columbia
City :
Washington

Referring URL
http://www.google.co...2
ww2 advertisement
Search Engine
google.com
Search Words
"what
did you do for
freedom today?" ww2 advertisement
Visit Entry
Page
http://maunderblog.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
Visit
Exit Page
http://maunderblog.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
Out
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Visitor's
Time
Jan 20 2009
12:10:55 pm

"The Man" was looking for something (during Obama's inauguration speech!) that was not available on my blog, but I have reposted it here (below) for you all to see. It is a post about a Medal of Honor that was awarded and I included an image of a WW2 poster that says, "What have you done for freedom today?" with the image of a dead soldier laying face down in the mud. Thank you War Department for this bit of propaganda.

You have now been warned: you are being watched!

God bless America, land of the free

There was a medal of honor awarded today (ORIGINALLY POSTED ON 6/2/08). I am truly thankful for the honor of those who serve our country in this time of war. I think that they provide many worthy examples for others to learn from. Nevertheless, I wonder if that honor and those examples couldn't be put to better use at home. What do we do here for freedom and justice in the world? Do preemptive wars of aggression really help spread an ideology of peace, freedom, and civilized dialogue in the uncivilized parts of the world where our troops are deployed (those areas are uncivilized - nothing spells uncivilized like the homicide by suicide that caused 9/11 and continues to take lives every day over in the Middle East)? I ask, does killing half a million Iraqis really make the rest of them free? How can we spread a better ideology than the one for which we now award medals of honor posthumously? This country cannot afford to spill its bravest blood in the sands of far off lands. We need to bring that faith and that courage home with our flags flying high at their return rather than draping their coffins.

As the picture says, what did you do for freedom today?

Hope, Change, Inauguration

I didn't watch the inauguration today. After the election I was pretty tired of politics and I haven't watched much politics at all. That is not the reason that I didn't watch the inauguration today though - I was busy working on stuff for school. But I still have an opinion:
I am glad for the optimism that so many people feel with this transition. We live in a time when it is very easy to feel pessimism; it feels like the whole economy is going to pieces and every time it seems like it can't get any worse we are proven wrong.
Hope is not a material change, it is much more spiritual. You can't feed yourself on hope but it is nevertheless the fuel of just about every accomplishment. It combines with faith in a very practical manner to make real advances and bring to pass real change. Hope is good.
There is another side to hope that is harder to deal with though. I refer to the side that is the disillusionment, the loss of patience, and the hopelessness. These come when seeds sown in hope hope fail to bear fruit. This is my great fear, and it is part of the reason I turned the news off after November 4. I fear that so many people - most of whom are good people that I can agree with in many ways - have invested so much in the rhetoric of hope and that if the real changes don't live up to expectations, to the hoped for changes... Well, I fear that there could be a collective disappointment that, when combined with the hard times that we are already facing, could lead us into a pit that this country has never seen the likes of.
Here is part of something that I wrote in November of 2007. I still have it on my end of the blog but it is one of about 200 posts that I made private:
I think that the key to happiness is the complete relinquishment of all expectations.

... Expectations are what make disappointment possible. Expectations are what make
family relationships more challenging than the run of the mill relationships
that we have with strangers with whom we have no expectations. If we give up all
expectations, what is left? Then we take things as they come, whatever they are....

And yet I am hopeful.

But unassuming.

I would add to that quoted piece that we are left with a lot of emptiness and mediocrity when we give up hope and expectations. I don't want that.

me

Monday's Music (as promised)

I have been really spending too much time thinking about this music video project. There is so much music that I really love, so many different artists and genres of music. I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits, Mala Rodriguez, Sarah Mclachlan, Nirvana, Marco Antonio Solis, Reggae, Top 40 (rock and Latin), indie, bossa nova... a lot of stuff; anything that talks to me when I listen to it... you know the ones. As a general rule, however, I am not a Country Music fan but there are a couple of notable exceptions. I like Greg Brown and even though I think that he is more Folk sounding than anything else he is considered Country. There are a couple of others and while I don't want to make this into a Country Music Monday thing, I do want to add one singer who I think is probably not that well known outside of serious Country fans.
Don Williams is a singer that my father used to listen to and I have loved his music for as long as I can remember. I still think that he leans a little to the folk side of things; his music has more of a lullaby quality than any twang to it.
I still like the idea of two songs, and that may be the way I do this always.

We've Got a Good Fire Going. This song really captures the 'easy to listen to' quality of his voice.


Wow, as I try to decide what video to put up next I am really taken by just how much I really LOVE this guy. I don't listen to him ever (like I said... Country) but I am having a really hard time deciding what to put on for a second song. Here is a short list of must listen to songs of his:

• If You Could Read My Mind
• Another Time, Another Place
• Lord, I Hope This Day is Good
• I Believe In You
  

I don't know what to add, just listen to them all; but here is number two anyway:

Good Ole Boys Like Me


Enjoy
me

And this is why...

Do moms ever get to call it babysitting, when they watch their own kids? A lot of dads do, and always as if it is a special sort of sacrifice. Babysitting is not the same as 'watching your kids'. You can babysit while doing very little watching.

Well, yesterday I was 'babysitting' Gabe. You will agree that it was babysitting - and this is why:

We had this Halloween paint high in a cabinet in the bathroom. He is learning to pee in a toilet (and doing a very good job) and he is at a stage right now where he will go in and try to pee every couple of minutes because he gets a lot of praise for peeing in the potty. So I was letting him go into the bathroom on his own quite a bit. When I went in to check on him he was standing on the counter next to the sink. You can see what a great kid he is, now see if you can count how many surfaces have face paint on them.

On the topic of babysitters not keeping an eye on the kids - When I was a little bit bigger than Gabe is now my dad was remodeling a room in the basement of the house we lived in. I saw him use hammers, saws, nails - everything. He knocked down a wall and was combining two rooms into one. Well, about that time he and my mom went out and left us with a babysitter. I went into my room with a hammer and knocked a single hole in the wall. It was one hole that extended the length of the entire wall around the room at the height of a four year old. When my parents arrived home the babysitter didn't even know I had done it.

I sure do love Gabe, but I am glad that the most we do around the house is decorate for holidays and no major repair work that he could try to replicate on his own. ^_~

me

Oh, and by the way, Gabe was a vampire for Halloween so he had a white face with black around the eyes and red on the mouth. I think that he did a really good job trying to copy that idea. It looks like he is sucking boogers and not blood this time though. LOL.

Four day forecast

Well, these might not be my plans alone:

• Saturday: homework.
• Sunday: the most important event Sunday is the Cardinals game. You didn't know that Arizona has a professional football team, did you? Well, it is something the state has only very recently acquired. Hopefully this new franchise stays there for a while instead of going back to its regular comedy routine.
• Monday: another holiday (and you thought all that was over) - Martin Luther King, Jr Day.
• Tuesday: The Obama Inauguration. If it is an indication of the changes that we all voted for we may have some dark days ahead (no pun intended): Obama's Inauguration will be making history in more than one way - it will be the most expensive ever. It is worth noting however that this does at least follow recent history. For example, this from four years ago: With an estimated price tag of $40m, the three-day celebration that is President Bush's second inauguration will be the most expensive ever. Way to make a change! In case you are making assumptions about my political leanings with this little rant, you are probably wrong. That said, i really don't like this sort of D.C. decadence while the rest of us are all having to tighten our belts.

Go Cardinals!

...please, don't go away...

From Greg Brown's, "Ring Around the Moon":

...Love, she always passes lightly and away,
Or like a lioness gets restless when she comes to stay.
And there's a ring around the moon; long, long time 'til day,
Play me one more tune; please don't go away...

Please, don't go away....

me

Something new

I know that this blog is painfully devoid of images and I imagine that the text blitz can be a little hard to deal with at times. The truth be told, I blog to write. So there. But, I have been thinking about doing a couple of small things to help with that. Here is what I have come up with: I am going to start featuring a music video (maybe every Monday) ala Youtube of some of the music that I dig or that moves me. Hopefully music is a universal enough language to work for everybody because many of the songs that I will feature are not in English.
How about a double feature to start?
Greg Brown
The Greg Brown song that I wanted to share is "Ring Around the Moon." I couldn't find it in a format I can share. Here is a different song, not quite as good, but still a great artist:

Hey Baby, Hey


Blue Car


Good night. If I love you, I love you (and it's on you to know).
me

Another Resolution

I realize that I have been blogging a lot lately. I have been under a little stress and this is a great distraction. Also, just the act of writing helps me find some organization in my mind. I woke up this morning thinking that I have been too nostalgic and too philosophical lately. I have my reasons for that but I want to avoid that. I don't want to lose what I have in my life in the present because I focused too much energy on nostalgia or the past.
I love the past and I try hard to be grateful for it but I live in the present and living in the present is my new resolution. Memories are valuable; when we are old and most of our life is behind us, memories are all that will substantiate us. Unfortunately, so often what we remember and what is real are two different things and unless we actually stay in touch or at least keep tabs on other people we end up remembering something that only exists in the present like a dream. Memories can turn into labels; the problem with labels is that they tend to misrepresent everything that they are attached to by reducing dynamic, 3D, living, changing objects to what is on the label. How surprised are parents when they find out that their child's recalled toys are more than what is just on the labels? The same can happen in our dealings with people when those dealings are built on past realities and often misguided assumptions.
It is a much more sure path to live unassumingly in the present with neither the neglect that comes from procrastination nor the neglect that comes from always brooding over or memorializing what used to be. This is part of my reason for blogging, you see, I am terrible at staying in touch and this helps me feel a little more in touch some of the time.

So, what is going on now?

• I went to the Grizzlies/Cavaliers game last night with my friend and roommate from my semester in Costa Rica, Gary. I had a really good time. My wife dropped me off and went shopping for a few hours and afterwards we couldn't find each other so I had to stand around outside for several very cold minutes but it all worked out in the end.
• My son is sick. I took him to the doctor yesterday and then found myself rushing to get to some meetings that I had to be at for work so I left quite a bit of the stuff that I needed to take home. The doctor said that it is nothing serious and that he can still go to daycare this week.
• I go back to school tomorrow. I am not really looking forward to it at all. Let me repeat that: not ... at all! I think that it has been causing me a little bit of stress. I start teaching at the University on Friday. I really need to look over some things to get more prepared.

Well, I need to go. I have a lot of work to do.

me

Bad Sleep Habits...

Keep me awake until 2:09 am on my blog.
me

A poem in English

Becky asked for English. I think that this captures one part of the meaning from Rima XXX.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost

poemas

Con cada vez que te veo
nueva admiración me das,
y cuando te miro más
aun más mirarte deseo.
Ojos hidrópicos creo
que mis ojos deben ser;
pues cuando es muerte el beber,
beben más, y desta suerte,
viendo que el ver me da muerte,
estoy muriendo por ver.
Pero véate yo y muera;
que no sé, rendido ya,
si el verte muerte me da,
el no verte qué me diera.
--Segismundo en La vida es sueño escrito por Pedro Calderón de la Barca

RIMA XXX
Asomaba a sus ojos una lágrima
y a mis labios una frase de perdón...
habló el orgullo y se enjugó su llanto,
y la frase en mis labios expiró.
Yo voy por un camino, ella por otro;
pero al pensar en nuestro mutuo amor,
yo digo aún: "¿Por qué callé aquél día?"
y ella dirá. "¿Por qué no lloré yo?"
--Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

I love it!

Okay, I looked at a lot of 'Single Ladies' parodies and I decided that it is a VERY good thing that I am not doing this. It would be quite an accomplishment, perhaps a lot of fun, but I would cease being a man. Really. But Justin does a GREAT job.

New Year’s Resolutions

• Things that I will try to accomplish:
  
  
  • I want to complete the Memphis Runners Track Club 2009 Road Race Series. A note about this: already my right ankle is starting to hurt just thinking about this. I think of myself as a runner more than anything else and after all that other debate in my earlier post about what phys. ed. class to take I signed up for a running class that was offered at the same time as the swimming class. (I know, what could be more boring, right? But it fits better with my schedule and with my goals this year.)
    
  • More greens in the garden.
    
  • Fewer tubers.
    
  • More legumes.
    
  • Lots of peppers.
    
• Things that I will not try to accomplish:
  
  
  • I will not try to climb Mt. Everest or any of the other giant mountains. If I do this and later blog about it, you all have permission to call me on this.
    
  • I will not personally study Mars. I will make no attempts to travel there and I will not try to map the surface of the Red Planet with robots or anything else. The same goes for all the other planets as well.
    
  • I will not hunt any penguins. If I do, I will do it in their element, mano a mano. You can't really call hunting penguins 'hunting' if you do it on the land. If (not when) I try this, it will be in the water with nothing but the tools God gave me. Penguins, you are safe. But if God is reading this and decides to equip me with the tools of a seal or an orca, watch out. You have been warned and your cute won't count at that point.
    
  • I don't plan on selling my art. Yep, I have art. Another, perhaps more accurate way of framing this "Thou shall not" goal is: I don't plan on selling my one and only piece of art. Just one. It is very nicely framed and it adorns a wall in my kitchen. Sorry people, not this year, but don't give up hope. When that pear goes up for auction, I will let you all know. And, just in case there is any doubt, you do want it. It is not 'very good'; it is perfect.
    
  • And despite how much others have begged me on this, I will not bring to pass world peace this year. Or end world hunger. Or save the whales. I will work on ending my own hunger this year and I hope for peace in my marriage (so far, so good). But you whales, I got nothing for you but this advice: duck and weave – in that order. If that doesn't work you might want to have your will already written. Sorry.
    
• Things that I would like to see others accomplish:
  
  
• Becky is trying to leave me, and I wish her luck. (Lucky thing for proof reading, because I accidentally wrote "I wish her lick." That is for a different list altogether, not here by any means. Luck, Becky, I wish you lick... I mean luck. Doh, I did again. Dang it!) She wants to move to Oakland. She has been looking for work there and she has started filling out applications for work there. If she gets a job she will take Gabe and Rosco and live in a box in a Bay Area back alley. All those homeless people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are all public school teachers from the area.
  
• Becky is planning on taking a group of students to Italy and Spain this summer.
• President Elect Obama said he is planning on closing Guantanamo Bay when he is in office because of allegations of torture there. I say, why stop there? What I would like to see is the closing of all of west Texas. Anybody who has driven through there know that that whole place is torture. I would quote local residents, but nobody actually lives in west Texas. B.O., do us all this favor, please.
• Talking about Texas brings me to this point: Texas, California, China, and Russia are all too big. I would like to see California split into three states: Northern California starting at Fresno and going north, the obvious Southern California would include Bakersfield and stretch to the border with Mexico, and in a move that is inspired by Michigan with its Upper Peninsula I think that LA and the Bay Area would be a good third state. Texas should be split into as many other states as possible with the only stipulations being that these new states are no bigger than Ohio and no smaller than Virginia. The only notable exception should be the area of the King Ranch which should become an autonomous nation. China and Russia should work on plans similar to the Texas plan. I don't know who can do these but, boy, would that bring change.
  
• Things that I think would be SUPER cool to do… if I was somebody else.
  
  
  • I floated the idea around of mastering Beyonce's Single Ladies dance. There are things that I would love to do – be able to dance is one of them. You see, I am not a dancer. I can confidently answer The Killers "Are we human, or are we dancer?" question with a loud HUMAN. I love wiggling to the music but none of what I am capable of really qualifies as dancing by any stretch of the imagination. I started to think about the number of hours I would have to spend to learn this, and then when would I show anybody what I had accomplished? Sorry, I am leaving this one for Napoleon Dynamite, or maybe my friend Eve. Are you listening Eve? Now you know.
    

And now you know.

I will update periodically as I come up with other goals. Your suggestions are welcome here.

Thanks,

me

Becky's New Hair

Okay, sorry for the little dry spell. I know that I owe a few posts that I have mentioned in here and I promise that they are already in the works in my drafts. I just wanted to follow up on two blog posts that Becky made on her blog. Her first post is "Great Stylist" and her second post is "My Hair." Feel free to check both of those out, the first tells how I cut her hair and the second has some pictures of the haircut. As I wrote in the comments on her blog - I was super nervous and shaking. But to save the money that she spends on a haircut, I figured that I would go forward with it. It is not the first time that ever cut hair (I cut my own hair and I have cut my brothers' and Dad's hair in the past as well as several room mates) but it is the first girl's haircut I have ever done. I was super nervous but she has received tons of praise.

She wants it shorter but i really like it right now. I will post again if I change it. I am going to copy the images that she put on her blog and below I will put the pictures (all of hot Pink) that I used as the inspiration for the haircut. (She let me cut it AND let me find the pictures to inspire the cut).

Her haircut (I took the photos really early this morning. I know that you were thinking they were professionally done... ;)

And my inspiration for her haircut:

Do you like the do?

I do.

me

This is how much I suffer

For weeks I have been struggling with this decision - Should I take Yoga, swimming, or weight lifting this semester?
I signed up for all three of these as soon as I could register in October. As a graduate student, I can sign up for classes before anybody else on campus can. I don't really understand the need for this because there is not really that much demand for graduate courses. You have to be a graduate student in the department (whatever department it may be) to even sign up for the graduate courses offered. So anyway, as a Graduate Assistant, I am required to take twelve credit hours each semester (nine is full time) but graduate students can take up to fifteen hours without applying for an overload waiver. To me that means that I can take one free course (okay, technically the University pays for all my courses as a GA, but you know what I mean). This is where the phys. ed. classes that I signed up for come in. I only have room in my schedule for one of them but these classes always fill up so I signed up for three so that I could have some options. I wanted to see what materials were going to be required, would there be a fee, and how any of these classes fit with my schedule.
Honestly, this has been a tough decision for me to make because I would be happy to take all of them.

The pros of each class:

• Yoga: I just got done with a Yoga class and I own the book already.
• Weight Lifting: Let's just say that I get along just fine with the free weights. Of the three options, this would be my favorite.
• Swimming: This poses the least amount of possible conflict with the other courses that I actually need to take. Also, I really dig any activity that can (justifiably) be done almost naked. (And trust me, I am really good at justifying.)

The cons:

• Y: While I really enjoy Yoga, this class has the most inconvenient schedule of these three.
• WL: Not as problematic as the Yoga class, but still not an ideal schedule. Also, I would have to buy two books. What class is this?
• S: This has the best schedule, but I have not spent serious time swimming in years. I won medals on a swim team as a kid (not that many, but still...) but I have not done much lap swimming since then. This class seems like the most daunting of the three possibilities because it is not something that I am already in at least half way decent shape for. But did I mention that it has the best schedule?

So what would you do in my place?

Help,

me

31 F and raining all day

I know that I just blogged about this, but I just want to complain some more. For those who know me, I am -NOT- okay with the cold. I believe that I have an allergy to it; sometimes when it gets really cold (to me really cold is anything under 50 degrees) I get red, bumpy, and shaky. Doesn't that sound like a severe allergic reaction?
So, I just wanted to say that the F in 31 F is not like the the F in BFF or anything remotely related to it. No, this F is more like the F in fridge, freezer, or OMFG I am freezing.

Posts that are coming soon:

• This little pig cried Wii, Wii, Wii all the way home.
• New Year's Resolutions
• Blue's Clues, Blue's Clues... (You might think that a three year old human not in possession of any dog's paws of his very own would want to use his hands to make 'a clue, a clue' - butt not if you know my son. Feel free to use your imagination... his obsession continues.)

me

FF-F-f-ff-Fff-ff-F-FF-ff-FfFn FREEZING

Two days ago I was in shorts, a tee shirt, and sandals OUTSIDE. It was in the low 70's here.

Today the high is 31 F.

My new year's resolution: Get somewhere warm. Stay there. (This may be more of a two year resolution because I still have 3 semesters left in my grad program.)

me