Eerily human

I am an iPhone user now.  C got me a used 3G iPhone from someone at his work who was upgrading - a most excellent present!  And I've got to say, I love it.  I like the apps, I like having e-mail, I like the visual voicemail, and I like having the notepad to keep track of things on.  I have a document that lists everything that I can think of, no matter how minor, that needs to be taken care of before the wedding.  And whenever I think of something else that needs to be added to the list, I can just add it right then.  Before, I always forgot what it was that I had thought of before I got to a computer.  I like playing Scrabble and Dicewars and using Twitter on it.

I feel a little dirty saying all of this - I don't think of myself as a Mac fangirl.  It is certainly possible that an Android phone or the Palm Pre might be just as good or better.  But we're with AT&T and C is a bit of a fanboy, so the iPhone it is.  And I like it.

I'm thinking about going vegetarian for one week.  It's not because I want to become a vegetarian permanently.  It's just that I've already cut back on meat a lot because of Weight Watchers - meat just has more points than vegetarian alternatives.  So I'm just curious to find out how hard it would be.  I think the hardest part would be lunches - I bring a lot of pre-packed food to work in the form of chicken soup and Weight Watcher frozen meals, and a lot of them have chicken in them.  Then again, it would be cheaper and better environmentally for me to make my own (vegetarian) lunch anyway.

I'm pretty sure I won't ever become a real vegetarian.  But if I ever do, I might have to fall off the wagon and have a cheeseburger every couple of months.

I don't think that anyone - who reads this blog and is coming to the wedding - wants to book a room at our wedding/reception site.  But I'm just trying to get the word out in case someone does: all of our rooms were booked up, but some new ones just came available, and we have them blocked off.  But only for one week!  So if you want a room, book by July 1st - any later than that and you're out of luck.

Wow, I had an incredibly productive, but tiring, day.  After work (I only work half days now that school's out) I went to Powell's with my mom, and then I wanted to do some good cardio, but I also wanted to weed the yard.  So I did both: pick an armful of weeds, then do 50 jumping jacks.  Pick an armful of weeds, then sprint back and forth across the yard.  Etc. etc.  My brand new heart rate monitor tells me I burned 386 calories, and I also got 2/3 of the back yard weeded - not bad, considering it was a JUNGLE!

Tomorrow we're having a big combined family dinner, and C and I are bringing dessert.  We wanted to make something healthy, so we decided to try making "pink peach soup".  Of course, in order to make enough for everyone, that means picking, washing and chopping 150-200 strawberries, juicing 15 oranges, peeling and chopping 10 peaches, and blending them all together (along with some lemon juice, plain yogurt and sugar.)  The result is delicious and perfect for a light, healthy summer dessert.  But I am so tired from all of that preparation, and then cleaning up the kitchen afterward!  Whew!  It is definitely time for bed!

I really DID run 10K!  See?  Pictures prove it happened!

I might have whined about all of the time and work and money put into our yard, but the result is wonderful!  I'm especially enjoying our garden right now.  We have a 6' x 8' raised bed of nothing but strawberries, as well as 5 kinds of lettuce, pak choy, basil, rosemary, thyme, and probably more I'm forgetting - and we will have tons of tomatoes, onions, and some little peppers whenever they ripen.

Right now, it's just so nice to be able to go out and grab a few leaves of lettuce and not worry about buying a whole head (or bag) of lettuce and then letting most of it go to waste.  And I've made a tasty cake and frosting with some of the strawberries already.  I can't wait for the tomatoes and onions!

I ran the Drop Top 10K yesterday, in 59:25!  I am really happy that I made it in under an hour!  (10K = 6.2 miles, btw.)  That works out to an average pace of 9:38 per mile or about 6.25 mph, which is certainly my best time yet.  I'm going to take a bit of a break from running now - I'll probably still run once or twice a week, but I'll also play DDR and do workout videos, etc.  But I think I might consider trying to train for a half marathon sometime in the future.  Maybe next summer.

One final down.  I think I did okay.  Final project due tomorrow - stressing me out, but I can stay up all night if I need to.  The finish line is in sight!  Now if only the next week after finals wasn't so completely chock full of wedding stuff, I could actually rest a bit.

I almost got hit by a bus today.  I was walking downtown near PSU.  I started crossing 5th, since I had a "walk" signal.  Luckily I looked down the street as I was crossing, because a bus came barreling through the intersection without even slowing down a little, and zoomed by within about two feet of me.  I looked up again.  Yes, he had a red light, and yes, my light was still a walk signal.  It hadn't even changed to the flashing red hand yet.

That'll get the adrenaline going!

I made it to 500 miles on Sunday - that's how many miles I've run since September.  I did the last hundred in a little under 6 weeks - quite good for my schedule.  We celebrated reaching my goal today by going out to Ernesto's - I had spaghetti carbonara.  I never order that sort of thing anymore, because when I want to splurge on food I end up doing it on cheeseburgers, ice cream, or alcohol.  But I figure if I've run 500 miles, I get a good meal guilt free.   And it was tasty.

Also, I have loved the weather this last couple of weeks.  I loooove it when it's warm out.  While I had to spend a depressing portion of the time inside doing homework, I still managed to go outside and enjoy it at least a bit.  And I'm way tanner than I was a month ago!

Lately I don't really have time to do anything except school, work, running and wedding stuff.  Last weekend I did manage to hang out with Sara, Katy and Marcie, which was fun.  We played Rock Band.  I like the drums.  I also got some time out in the sun doing yard work.  That was nice, too.

School: my classes, which were very easy at the beginning of the term, got really tough all of a sudden.  I have to come up with my own final project for the functional languages class, and I HATE doing that.  I always end up coming up with ideas that take about 10 times as long as they should.  But I am still completely in love with Theory of Computation.  We're doing lambda calculus right now, which fits in nicely with the functional languages class.

Work: I am still working.  I said before that I would leave in the fall, but since it pays so well and they are so willing to be flexible, I might cut back on my hours and stay there a while longer.  Again.  I keep feeling like I should leave and move on, but they're so darn nice and let me pick whatever schedule I want and it pays well...it's kind of hard to find a better job than that for a student.  I only wish it actually gave me some CS experience...which is a very serious drawback.

Running: I'm a bit burnt out on it.  I made myself a challenge to make it to 500 total miles run by June 1st  - this made for about 100 miles in 6 weeks.  I'm less than 25 miles away now, and I'm pretty sure I'll make it, but I'm TIRED of running.  As soon as I finish my first 10K in June I'm cutting back on it and doing more DDR, workout videos, and various other exercises.  However, I am definitely in the best shape I've ever been.

Wedding:  Less than 10 weeks to go now.  Things are picking up.  I'm getting excited, but I'm also getting nervous about the many little details that need to be decided.  Playlist for the reception? Program? What to say in the actual ceremony?  Where to get an aisle runner, if we actually get one?  What kind of flowers?  I don't like making decisions.  Can't someone else decide all this for me?

Yeah, that's pretty much my life right now.  Busy, but generally pretty good!

I ran 10K in the real world (not the treadmill) for the 2nd time today.  It was fun.  When I finished, I was really only stiff in two places: 1) my back, and 2) my elbows.  It hadn't ocurred to me at first, but if you hold your arms at 90 degrees and swing them back and forth for an hour, they get really stiff and kind of painful!  I also got a bit sunburmed.  I expected that on my shoulders, but I didn't expect it on part of the top of my hand - you know, the part that, if you make a fist and face the thumb up, is exposed to the sun.  It's a funny looing sunburn,

Anyway, my incredibly hilly run in Tryon Creek that I try to do twice a week now has really increasaed my endurance.  The run today was semi-flat, and it was almost easy.  I probably could have kept it up for another mile at least.

It's the time of year when geekpdx's birthday, Mother's day, my brother's birthday and my grandmother's birthday all happen within a few days of each other.  (This year we also our wedding photographer visiting our house in the midst of this, so that means more house cleaning.)  At first I volunteered for more cooking/baking than I could really handle, but I pared it down a bit.  Now, between Friday and Sunday, I'll be making:

Snowball cupcakes
Pina colada cake
Corned beef and cabbage
Potatoes
Dinner rolls

Not too bad a list, really.  I was originally also going to make dutch babies for breakfast on Saturday and a peach cobbler for dessert on Sunday, but then I decided to be more realistic and fobbed those off on other people.  Maybe this way I'll even have enough time to do some homework!

I'll be taking Object Oriented Programming next fall.  My decision was down to AI (better schedule, generally cool) and OOP (more useful), but it turns out they canceled AI, so that made the decision pretty easy.  It's probably the decision I should have made anyway.

PSU put up their schedule for next Fall and I’m going crazy with all the interesting classes I have to choose from.  I know I’ll be taking Programming Languages (it’s a required class that they want you to take as early as possible) and Intro to Database Management.  I’m told that most full-time grad students take 3 classes at a time; the crazy ones take 4.  So I’m stuck choosing one or -maybe- two classes from the remaining schedule.  The following are classes that sound interesting and don’t conflict with the other two classes that I know I’m taking:

 

• Object-Oriented Programming
• Computer Architecture
• Artificial Intelligence
• Intro to Computer Security

 

(Okay, so really that’s all the masters-level classes that don’t conflict, I haven’t already taken, and that I have the prerequisites for.  But they all sound so cool!)

 

I know there are one or two people who read this who are software engineers or computer scientists or what have you.  Do any of you have advice as to which of those classes might be good?  I want to pick one that’s either especially useful or especially interesting.  Both would be a bonus!

I'm starting to realize that I'm actually going to leave my job at the end of the summer.  I've been working here, in the same building with the same people in one way or another, since September 2001.  It will be 8 years when I leave.  That might not be saying a lot if you're, say, 40, but for a 26 year-old, that's a pretty big portion of my life.  Of course, it's not 100% guaranteed that I'll leave - I just know I'm going to go to school full time starting in the fall.  If a 10-hour a week job were to magically open up here, and I can't get anything better at PSU or elsewhere, then I'd take the 10-hour job here.  Chances of that are pretty small, though.

It'll be really weird to leave.

I just finished Name of the Wind, as recommended/given to me for my birthday by Steve and grizelda.  It started out feeling a little formulaic, but it didn't take too long to get really good.  Looking back on it, a lot of it still could be considered pretty standard fantasy fare, but it's done really well, and I really enjoyed it.  Can't wait for the next one in the series!

In other general news: wedding planning continues well; I got food poisoning Sunday night but was better by this morning (won't be eating bell peppers for a while...yechh!); and...drumroll...I made it to my goal weight in Weight Watchers!  Sometime soon I'll get together a  before and after picture.  I've lost about 30 pounds since the end of August.  Hooray!

I'm taking Functional Languages this term, and so I'm starting to learn Haskell.  Learning Haskell when I'm only familiar with languages like C and Java is a bit like learning Chinese when I'd only studied English and Spanish...except more so.  I wouldn't say it harder than learning Chinese, necessarily, but that's because Chinese has more to memorize.  But the "grammar" difference between Haskell and C is a lot more different than the grammar difference between English and Chinese.  I have to learn to think completely differently for functional languages, whereas I only have to learn to think a little bit differently to speak Chinese.

Luckily, Haskell still uses the regular characters, not special symbols.  And there's some new "vocab" to learn, but not too much - at least, not yet.

We spent the weekend at the beach with friends, and had lots of fun.  On Saturday, it was pouring down rain and incredibly windy, but we managed to drag ourselves out of the house to go to the SOLV beach cleanup.  Maybe it's because we got a late start, or because of the way the tides have been lately or who knows what, but there was almost NO litter on the beach, at least not in the area we were.  We created more garbage (the plastic bags we used and then threw away) than we actually picked up.  I feel like if you're going to get soaking wet and cold to beautify the beach, there should at least be trash out there to pick up!  I guess I shouldn't complain about the beachs being clean, though.

Friday and Sunday were generally very pretty days, of course.  I went for some runs on the beach, and that was fun.  It's nice to get away from the house for a little while - especially on Spring Break when I have no homework.  My classes start tomorrow, and the fun begins again!

I'm on Twitter now.  I find it easier to post a sentence now and then that write a whole blog entry, unless I actually have something big to talk about.

http://twitter.com/john75half