Puddle Jumping in DCBlogosphere * Bug * Favorites * Life * 30x30 * Marathon * World * HOME
I was thinking about that as I was playing in traffic riding home this evening while the rain got harder and harder. Being out in the weather can be really invigorating; it makes you realize how lucky you are to be alive, how very amazing nature is, and how little control we have over so many things (how very Zen).
I was having so much fun tonight that it was a challenge to make myself pay attention to all of the things** you have to pay attention to while biking in DC if you'd like to stay alive. I guess I have mentioned
Watch for the new blog theme. |
 Photo by CNN. Now tell me that doesn't look fun? |
* Safety first, of course.
** Moving cars, parked cars, drivers in cars, pedestrians, other bikes, traffic lights, dogs, holes, bumps, stray objects, the occasional heavy thing swinging overhead on a crane . . . .
Or at least sleep habits.
Can somebody tell me what I was doing reading Slate Magazine at midnight on a Wednesday?
So we're settling into a post-travel routine. Mac is off at a dance workshop in Maine for the next week which gave me some time this afternoon to finally post photos. (And completely demolish rearrange the bedroom.)
My initial edit to 220 balloned to 344 (12 pages of photos) once I added Alex's pictures and Mac's special requests. Have Fun!
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Just a sample of a few of the new images.
More than a week after getting back, how can I be so busy that I haven’t updated the blog? What have I been doing?
Sleeping. Between jet lag and picking up a cold/stomach bug in the final week of our trip, I didn’t manage to stay up past ~7pm until last Thursday.
Rescuing Bug from herself. The poor thing spent 6 weeks first in a house with 3 big conures and then one little cockatiel and managed not to get eaten or otherwise perish, then, she’s home for three days and gets her neck tangled up in the little tent in her cage for several hours (which could have ended really badly but thankfully didn’t) and now has bruised vocal cords. She’s recovering and the tent has been trimmed of all loose threads and will be inspected more often in the future. Her peeps are returning to normal.
The Bug Blog is on vacation while Mac & Jen are in China. You can track our travels at There & Back Again.
I figure this is close enough to fit the theme.
Mac with our nephew, Zachary.
In preparation for the weather in Beijing, Chengdu, and Xi'an, Mac got a haircut. 'Nuff said?
He doesn't look all that different, but the mop is smaller.
We're in full throws of packing/planning. Friday we did a mock travel day and carried all our gear around DC while we picked up our China Visa and ran errands.
Of course, we found ourselves in a tea shop playing cards.
Mac learned that his bags are uncomfortable and awkward. We all agreed to ditch the bags before the 3-day hike at Emei Shan and made list of things that we'd forgotten to pack, didn't leave room for, or should leave behind.
In other news, I've accepted a new job. I will be the media coordinator for Food & Water Watch when we return from China.
Many blogs have a distinct voice, an obvious audience (often grandparents and far flung relatives), or a particular theme (small birds, green living, going on a trip). I'm not sure that the Bug Blog has really found its voice, especially since Bug's presence comes and goes. So, I will be experimenting with voice and theme for a while.
One common blogger device is the game of questionnaire tag. You've probably gotten one by email. Those do not bring focus to a blog unless the author is very creative and they do not appeal to me, personally.
However, some participatory blogger devices are more flexible and visual in nature - this is a visual medium, after all. I'm a particular fan of what used to be Self-portrait Tuesday, the Self-portrait Challenge. (June is Pop-Art so, watch for it.) Stephanie at little birds is prompting a Color Week. She does some nice color themed blog entries and I just might play along this time.
Ok, one last thing:
While there are a few more things to do in here, one of them is the breakfast dishes.
This morning, post Dr.'s office for travel meds, pharmacy, photo shop for visa pictures, and meeting Alex to get his application, we hoped a bus for the Chinese Embassy Visa office, which isn't, by the way, in the Embassy at all. It's way up Wisconsin Avenue between Georgetown and Tenleytown. 
We arrived at the visa office at a little before noon, passed through the metal detectors,drew a number (# 161), and sat down and watched Chinese TV while we waited.
When we arrived, the clerks were serving #149. Folks around us headed up to windows 1 & 2 when called . . . right up to #160, when the office closed for lunch.
So I launched a travel blog called There and Back Again where you'll be able to track all our China adventures.
Here's Mac checking out the furnace from above, through the new hole in the kitchen floor. Notice how the drain pipe to the sink is no longer there . . . It kind of fell off.
But, by Friday evening, we were seeing some progress:
Look, kitchen cabinets! You can't see it but we figured out how to hook up a new drain too.
Today when I fed the fish, I happened to glance at the castle that's been in my tank for, oh, 12 years (eek) and noticed this little 
red fish sticking out of the second window from the left - clearly stuck.
And, oh my, was he/she freaking out. Ultimately, I had to pick up the castle and use my finger to push him/her back through the other way. The poor thing has a sore on his head from trying so hard to swim through a too-small hole. Now, I have to decide if this was just a freak occurrence or is this castle actually a DEATH TRAP.
The things you'd just never think of . . .
I need a job. It's looking like we're (probably) not moving to some crazy little town in the mid-west (at least for now) and I need a job - preferably on energy (or environmental) policy in Washington DC or New York City. Just putting that out there.
The pavement. The rain. The building. The dog. The cherry blossoms.
My feet, rythmically pounding the earth. The scent of lilac. The air in my lungs.
It's all the same stuff arranged in complex patterns that cause each specific behavior that makes up this gigantic cosmic dance.
)).
My jaw still doesn't open wide enough to put an entire sushi roll in my mouth. Shoving it through is messy and unpleasent . . reduced to knife and fork.At least I'm back on solid food and only on over-the-counter meds.
Saturday: Wisdom teeth removed. Percocet swallowed; day spent sleeping. Evening good, taking only Tylenol, even considered going out.
Sunday night: The throbing begins.
Tuesday: Regular pain killers stop being good enough and only provide about an hour of taking-the-edge-off-the-pain. Pain intensifies and is not relieved by Percocet, radiates to temples, ears, sinuses.
Wednesday: The oral surgeon said it's very unusual to have dry socket bi-laterally so it's probably just really severe pain of the normal variety. Well, then . . . prescribes double dose of Percocet and recommends more ibuprofen.
Wednesday/Thursday: I spend the better part of two days in a Percocet induced nap cycle.
Friday: It's not bi-lateral anymore, exactly. The left definately hurts worse but both sides have the characteristic radiating pain up to the temples/ears. Other oral surgeon says we could treat it by filling the sockets with paste and pain killers but that would slow down healing or just leave it to heal and prescribe more percocet . . . .
Saturday: I fill a third prescription for percocet from a third physician in 7 days . . . Does this get me on any sort of watch list?
I've gone from cuddling ice packs to prevent swelling to cuddling hot water bottles to bring it down.
Proof of human progress: The average diet and dental hygiene doesn't result major tooth loses by the third decade of life and, consequently, most of us experience the right of passage of having up to four major teeth extracted from the back of our jaws and any drilling or sawing involved with doing that (I forgot to ask for them when we were done on Saturday - oh well).
On the upside, I was wide awake at 4:30 yesterday morning when the Percocet™ wore off and took the car down the the Vietnam Memorial for a few sunrise shots. It's still so cold at 6 am that it's almost like having your face on ice just being out there.
Mac has been out of town and I've been playing tourist in DC.
Yet. (click for a larger image of the map)
But, we bought plane tickets (
) and travel insurance (
), so we're committed!!!!
But, they won't let us on the plane until June 28th (I'm pretty sure pleeding wouldn't help.).
How will we stand the wait?
We are, however, getting away in a more domestic manner this weekend.
When you are being pulled by the heartstrings, you better not let your hips get too far behind.
n : persistent determination [syn: application, backbone, balls, chutzpah, clock, courage, determination, doggedness, firmness, grit, guts, gutsiness, guttiness, heart, inflexibility, intestinal fortitude, intransigence, moxie, nerve, obduracy, obstinacy, perseverance, persistence, pertinacity, resoluteness, resolution, resolve, spunk, starch, staunchness, steadfastness, stick-to-itiveness, stomach, stubbornness, true grit, willfulness
ant: indifference, slackness, weakness]
If you were using the human eye, which is much more sensitive than anything you can buy, to view this (rather than my cute little Pentax OptioS5z), you could tell that these are, indeed, clover growing deep in the Tenleytown metro station.
But it is convenient for me that so many people do.
One of the downsides to loosing 25-30lbs (there aren't many) is that, rather suddenly, none of your clothes fit. Over Christmas, I bought two pairs of pants but alternating them didn't make for much wardrobe variety. So, yesterday, I spent an hour at Value Village filling a cart that replaced more than 50% of my non-athletic wardrobe, including three very nice suits (not pictured) for $110.
An upside that I discovered today is that I can finally breathe in plow: 
Well, this is part of the plan (see below). We finally got (mostly) finished and Tom moved in! He slept in his new apartment last night, showered in it this morning, and hasn't come running upstairs screaming about anything falling down . . . that's good.
Send her an official student loan statement that looks something like:
AMOUNT OF LOANS $67,901.77 
I figured out that multiple loan consolidations to lock in interest rates were being added up so it's not really that high. Still, we have been adding to what I carried over from undergrad . . .
Ending Balance – as of 12/31/2005 $32,801.67 (whimper)
Cumulative Interest Paid $7,385.17 (whimper, whimper).
Someone promise me that this is an investment even though I've done (and will continue to do) wacky things like work for non-profits and marry an artist 
.
So all the various permits and public utility approvals came through and contractors riped a hole in the front of the house a couple weeks before Chrismas.
I've sanded joint compound, leveled floors, ground down concrete, installed tile, painted walls, glued down floors and chased contractors doing the heavy work . . .
Here's Mac getting in on the grouting action:
Now, the basement looks like:
We still need to install the living room floor and finish it, paint the bedroom, get the plumber to finish the bathroom fixtures (shower is a helpful copper pipe sticking out of a lovely new tiling job), tile the kitchen counters, seal the bathroom and kitchen counter tile. In the mean time, all four of us are living on the second floor and sharing one bathroom and poor little Bug keeps getting exiled to the travel cage in the bedroom to protect her from dust and fumes. And, the living room looks like:
Those are kitchen cabinets for upstairs (You've seen pictures of the hideous plywood and rusting metal things with 50 coats of paint that we have in the kitchen now). We got a great deal on used cabinets but we probably won't get to install them until after graduation in May which is when we a planning a complete kitchen redo (The boxes of linoleum tile on top the cabinets are for the floor and the countertops will be made of a similar pattern as the bathroom tile above to use up leftovers. + We think the whole color scheme will go well with the purple paint that Paul picked out.)
And, school starts up again this week. Oh, and I got I job - only 20 hours a week, working for the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities.
I deleted some files off the server today . . . turns out I needed them. This little manuver resulted in bunches of my photos disappearing and being replaced by a little image of their file names like so:
| kandy_garden2.JPG |
I've lost a number of things, presumably, to housekeeping since they disappeared in the house including a Baltimore County Public Schools copy of "Call of the Wild", the spare key to the car (I actually remember throwing it out but I thought it was something else) and two (count them: 2) sets of house keys.
Oh, well. Here's a recent photo that I didn't delete to look at while I put the others back up.
Find a new physical event goal. After the marathon, I briefly considered doing the Chesapeake Bay swim until I read that entry required either proof of completing another open water swim or a 3 hour pool swim. I don't doubt i could swim for that long but, man, I just don't want to. That put the length of the Bay swim in perspective for me though. I missed the registration for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. I tried to register but the server was too busy to handle it and then it filled up 24 hours after registration opened. I'm tentatively planning to do the Frederick Half-Marathon in April but I'm floundering a bit with event goals . . . so I should focus on my goal to
Do more yoga. I suspect my lack of yoga routine in 2005 to be closely related to my hip discomfort during the MCM. I haven't had a solid yoga routine since before going back to school. It's high time I focused on it again.
Loose 12.5 more pounds - or so. I didn't quite loose 30 pounds in 2005 but I did loose 27.5. Now, faced with meeting the goal, I think should raise the bar (I can do chin-ups now, by the way - tee, hee. Wasn't really a resolution but I've been working on them since Paul hung a chin up bar in the hall between the kitchen and the front door.) and add 10 pounds (lost) to the original goal. By my very geeky body fat to lean mass calculations, that should put me solidly in the healthy zone. I'm not really sure what my natural lean body weight should be but 12.5 more pounds seems like a good next step. Unfortunately, I already need new pants. The clothing situation is getting desperate but I hate clothes shopping . . . I picked up a pair of jeans and a pair of corduroys (and a pretty new suit for $1) at my mom's favorite thrift shop over the holidays so maybe I can manage to avoid a full scale wardrobe shopping event for a while still.
Bake more. You might question the wisdom of this given the previous goal. The 4th quarter of 2005 was definitely marked by more cooking than the previous 10 or 12 quarters. But still, I did very little baking. Then, during the last three weeks of 2005, I made >400 cookies, 7 loaves of pumpkin or zucchini bread, and a peach cobbler (and I helped make an apple crumble). I believe that may have followed 48 weeks of no baking at all. They were all tasty (though some textures left a bit to be desired) and many were low fat and sweetened with fruit juice. Baking is not very South Beach but I'm allowed 3 starches a day - may as well really enjoy them.
That seems like a pretty good list . . . I still would like to teach the bird to come on command or do other tricks. Since trick training is transferable and we could teach her some basic manner commands too, it would really help whoever takes care of her while we're in China for 5-6 weeks next summer (contact me to get on the list of wannabe bird sitters) but I need to consider my commitment to this for a few more days first.
By the time New Year's rolled around, we were in balmy the Syracuse New York area visiting my parents and sister (I'm not from the area, by the way. My parents followed the magnetic draw of the first grandchild and moved north.).
Here we are ice skating in lovely downtown Syracuse. (Click on the pictures for the full image.)
Our after dinner activities included checking out an annual Syracuse tradition: crazy lights displays.
Yes, those are the rear lights of the car ahead of ours going into Santa's Workshop.
This, is my favorite photo just cause it's so weird and blurry. It's a sports display, skiing and sledding on the right, sailing on the left.
For the last couple of years, we've been alternating between cold and snowy and tropical island. Wonder where we are going to be next year.
May your breads all rise . . .
This year, shopping would have coincided with finals and thesis concert preparations (you may have noticed the dearth of blog entries in December). Baking, however, was something we could handle.
Alex (top left) was an incredibly good sport for making 8-10 different kinds of batter for cookies, some of which had to be diabetic or allergy friendly, while Mac and I made it into cookies.
So, 11 months from the last resolutions and contemplating the next, it's time for a reality check.
1.) Loose 30 pounds before I turn 30
Well, I revised that
one to 30 pounds in 2005 and I am well on my way. From Fitday.com " You are currently 7.6 lb above the target weight. The deadline for your goal is 32 days (4 weeks, 4 days) away. To meet your goal you need to lose about 1.66 lb per week." And, since I never make it to the gym in spite of the lovely classes they offer and the hot tub, I finally joined Curves yesterday - simpler anyway; maybe fewer choices will help.
2) Run 26.2 miles on October 30, 2005
Done.
3. Teach the bird to come on command.
Oh, my. I was a total failure on this one. I don't think lessons even got
past January. I'll have to think some more on this.
4. Water the plants
Well, they are alive . . . but they still live in semi-arid conditions.
5. Make the Bug Blog more socially
relevant.
Sort of. I don't find the stuff I write for school translates to blog particularly well since it would require so much backstory to make sense (if I posted my analysis of federal trade adjustment assistance, for example, or a 30-page conflict analysis of the DC lead crisis, good grief). I think I was doing alright until April but
then grad school didn't really leave me any spare analysis capacity -
maybe, next year.
Some blogs that I watch have been discussing interesting spam. I got my favorite spam so far today:
From: Post@cia.govDear Sir/Madam,
we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.
Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached.
Yours faithfully,
xxxxx xxxxx*
++++ Central Intelligence Agency -CIA-
++++ Office of Public Affairs
++++ Washington, D.C. 20505
++++ phone: (703) 482-0623
++++ 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time
attachment: list.zip
*name omitted just in case.
editors note 11/28/05: Just because it's funny, doesn't mean it's harmless. Don't open the attachment. Of course, if you have an 
nothing would happen anyway.
I think of myself as a rather adventurous cook. I've been cooking regularly since I was 14 and declared I was going to be a vegetarian. My parents had a fit; I was pretty stubborn; they calmed down; I learned to cook. I borrowed tons of cookbooks from the library and started my recipe collection. I discovered heath food stores and tofu, but, as I didn't drive, had a pretty limited capacity for getting specific ingredients when I wanted them, so I learned to make do. I've been playing "fast and loose" with recipes ever since, using them as guidelines for combinations of quantities, spices, and cooking times.
Since I've been cooking more, that makes Mac nervous. When we moved in together, 10 years ago now, he took over most of the cooking. Recently, I was going to cook fish (which we do occasionally even though it's not strictly vegetarian) but wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. I was also spending the evening cleaning the fish 
tank (the irony, no?) and didn't want to do anything complicated. I decided to just toss some canned black beans and diced tomato (w/green chili) over the fish and bake it. That was way outside the box for Mac (but, apparently he thought I was putting spaghetti sauce on the fish). Mac liked it even better than I did. Turns out that all the juice from the beans and tomato makes for very moist and tender fish.
But, back to the phenomenon, Google Cooking. What? The advent of wireless internet has made cooking much easier. I can plug the primary ingredients that I want to cook into a search engine and it spits back dozens (if not hundreds) of possible recipes to choose from. The Washington Post wrote a whole article about this "phenomenon" today. You can see photos of the carnage from my last foray into Google Cooking. Our vegetable guy gave us two enormous cashew pumpkins so I made huge pots of pumpkin peanut butter and thai pumpkin coconut soups (generally, of course) for a recent potluck - it was a lot of pumpkin.
This morning's article lead me to tofu, cauliflower, peas, and orange for tonight's dinner.
Goal Progress - courtesy of Fitday.com
"You are currently 15 lb above the target weight.
The deadline for your goal is 63 days (9 weeks, 0 days) away.
To meet your goal you need to lose about 1.67 lb per week."
I'm down 5 lbs since starting this South Beach thing. Not bad - that's 2.5 lbs per week and it's not for a lack of eating. Today, I'm trying to drink 40 oz of (diluted) sports drink in preparation for tomorrow. I expect to retain some water along with the extra glycogen which I'll then loose when the glycogen burns off (That's why extreme diets cause people to loose 10+ pounds really quickly. By basically fasting, people burn off muscle glycogen stores and the water involved in doing so.) So, really, I'm trying to put on a couple of pounds of water.
Running gurus recommend eating 5-8 grams of carbohydrate for every kilogram of lean body mass daily when carbo-loading for a marathon - for me that's 240-380 grams. Since starting South Beach, I've been eating between 130-200 grams of carbohydrate daily - plenty to fuel daily running and weekend 8-10 milers but I don't know about a marathon.
Yesterday, I managed 256g (including the 30 oz of sports drink) but I had to work at it. That's a big change from earlier this spring when I rarely fell below 300 grams. The difference is, whenever I tried to cut calories while eating high carbohydrate, I was hungry all the time. Right now, I'm trying to eat extra grains and fruits to get me to my carbohydrate goal but I can't imagine eating 380 grams.
Time for a mid-morning snack . . . wish me luck.
It's finally raining in Washington. It took me all day to muster the resolve to go run but I really enjoyed it once I got going. There's something about running in crazy weather . . . over coming the elements and such that I find rather invigorating. So much so that I ran my normal 3.5 mile circuit 5 minutes faster than usual.
Now, if only he would stop bringing home
"No, we don't panic now. First we mutate, then we panic."
"Wings is good. Yes, wings is good."
"Wow, that's like the Studio 54 of oceans."
"Ears beat teeth." "No, I think Mke Tyson proved that teeth beat ears."
"I need to get more guys around." "What?" "I need to propogate, propogate, propogate."
"Boo-yah, who's got ears?"
"Let that be a lesson to you: stink glands!"
Every once in a while, you need a night off from graduate school.
I worried that by also setting the goal to Run 26.2 Miles on October 30, 2005 I might be undermining the first goal. Without being very organized about restricting your diet while eating enough nutrients to fuel your running, it's pretty easy to compensate for the running by eating more. I weigh almost exactly what I weighed when marathon training started.
I also set a non-public goal about getting straight "A"s in graduate school 
- I'm much closer on that one (there was this "B+" incident in micro-economics) but that also undermines the first goal - skipping a workout to do homework and bribing yourself with food to read one more chapter isn't great for weightloss.
So, back to that extension . . . . According to 
if I set a new goal of December 31, 2005, " The deadline for your goal is 97 days (13 weeks, 6 days) away. To meet your goal you need to lose about 1.37 lb per week." I might have to be more organized about this.
I passed the eye test at the DMV on Friday. I've never had a driver's license that had no restrictions. See how happy I am (It didn't hurt that the woman taking the photos was quite a character.).
The DMV in southeast DC is actually a good example of what I like about the city. When you scrape away federal Washington with all it's politicians and staffers and lawyers, it's, at heart, a friendly southern city. At the DMV, folks chatted with neighbors and joked. Everyone wanted to know how I liked the lasik surgery and who did it.
They're not perfect. On my way out, I noticed that my driver's license still had the eyeglasses restriction on the back. I went back in right to the same clerk and they reprinted the license. On my way out the second time, I noticed she had substituted a "0" for the second digit in my weight implying a significant weight loss. I wasn't going back again.
I had a discussion about that with Mac. My position being that only someone who doesn't have to wear corrective lenses every waking hour could think that.
Sunday morning, I awoke early at the in-laws to do the long run I'd missed the day before. Apparently, I was a bit out of it because I put my contact lenses into the wrong eyes. That really doesn't work.
A mile into my run, my right lens was still making me crazy. I rubbed my eye and out it came. I may have put it in inside out but I'll never know for sure because before I could put it back in, a gust of wind caught it and blew it away.
I ran 15 miles and drove back to my in-laws house with one contact lens.
So it seems that Matt wrote about Pamela and I wrote to Pamela about Julie. Pamela wrote about both Julie and Matt and I'm completing the circle. (There's even a poll.)
Any one else want in on this?
A mere 125 pages into the new Harry Potter book which arrived from Amazon.com around noon yesterday, we decided we really needed to go food shopping. We are hosting a bbq today and it's difficult to buy beer in the district on Sunday. Sigh.
While standing in the checkout line, a Safeway supervisor came up behind us with a pre-teen and her mom in tow. "Hey, [I've forgotten the name of the clerk], do you have any more of those Harry Potter books at your register?" "Yup," she says, and passes one over our head to the supervisor who passes it to the girl who is now beaming.
Wow. Even Safeway felt the need to carry the new Harry Potter book.
I'm up and running again but have been negligent about updating the blog . . . . Why? I'm really tired and it's not really the running.
We'd been planning on renovating again. But, this time, we need the city's permission. Seems we don't own the front yard (Yes, this was disclosed when we bought the place) and need a public space permit to dig a hole, move the utility meter, and put a front door in on the basement level. We've been working on this since late January, found a contractor to do to the job, spoke with an electrician and the electric company, and had anticipated being mostly done by now . . . but, that was way too optimistic. This is District of Columbia bureaucracy we're talking about here.
First, Mac spends several days calling around to find out what we need. We needed plans drawn up by an architect. It seems that this is a piddling little job that most architects want nothing to do with. We finally find one who would assign the job to his assistant (?). So, nice guy comes out and measures and draws up plans and drops them off. Mac takes them to the city and discovers that the city wants some changes made to the plan, needs to be on mylar (?) and needs an official plot of the property from the city. Fine, we order the official plot, we call the architect back and he agrees to make changes. 
I week later, we call him to find out what happened to him and he brings over the plans. So now we have to find a place that makes mylars and get our plans copied. We get one mylar and four backup copies as requested and Mac heads back to the city planning office. But, the city still wants more changes, wants a document showing how much dirt we will dig up and where it will go and wants the plans stamped by an engineer licensed by DC. (At this point, Mac is stomping around and cursing). We call the architect to make more changes and he (bless him) agrees to call around and find an engineer to stamp the plans since, apparently, his firm has no engineer licensed by DC. A few days later, Mac heads out to the suburbs to meet with an engineer and get the plans stamped. Then, it's back to the planning office where, it turns out, four copies is not enough because four copies only covers the one department that needs the paperwork. Paperwork also has to be sent off to every utility company that services our property for approval and a variety of government departments. There is no copy place near the planning office so Mac treks off to make more copies. Returning, he discovers that he also needs more copies of some other document on 11x17 paper but no copier in the building can accommodate them so it's off to find a copy place again. Finally, all the paperwork is submitted and Mac is instructed to return Monday. Mac returns on Monday to discover that the city can't find the paperwork . . . . .
In the mean time, we've been working on the backyard, which you may remember from a previous entry.
It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's going to be lovely. The pile of dirt under the green tarp (left) and the plants in buckets (right) are destined for raised beds surrounded by a little brick wall against the right and back fences. The table (currently upside down on the on the compost bin) and chairs go on the newly laid patio (center). The hammock goes under the tree in the corner (left).
Because, I work at my assistantship two and a half days a week, do an internship one day a week, take a class two nights a week, and our weekends are booked from now until Christmas, Fridays are the day we are supposed work on the yard. Two Fridays ago, we tore down the old fence (which may have been up by sheer willpower) and sunk new fence posts. Somehow the job took longer than we thought it would and after my 10 mile run on Saturday morning, I spent 10 hours putting up a fence in the back yard. Tuesday, when I was supposed to be studying, we hauled the old fence post and a bunch of trash from next door that had been collecting water to the dump (we'd spoken with the landlord about the trash but he doesn't care much about the place and we just wanted it gone). Friday, we poured the patio which means we first leveled the ground, then I hauled nearly 40 bags of concrete from the curb and smoothed the concrete that Mac was mixing and pouring. Saturday morning, I got up and ran 12 miles.
That's why I'm tired.
This is Ed. He's made of plastic. Apparently, you can buy ones made of real bone but they mostly are sold to universities and they are very, very expensive.
Ed is one of Mac's projects. ("You want to buy a what?") Ed is supposed to be very useful to help Mac prepare for the class he's teaching in the fall on anatomy and kinesiology. It's a little un-nerving to squeeze past Ed in the hallway at night and Bug doesn't like him at all.
Wednesday evening, Mac, our housemates, and I joined the throngs of people who wander through our neighborhood several nights a week on their way to RFK stadium to watch a Nationals game (Beguiled by the Boys of Summer: The Nationals, Improbably in 1st Place, Inspire Lovefest at RFK according to the Washington Post).
I took my fancy new camera (the lines in the picture are the netting behind home plate). I took pictures in spite of the legal warnings on the back of my ticket. We think I'm only in trouble if I make money off this image (unlikely).
Turns out, it was Mac's first baseball game, ever. Tom kept muttering "communist" whenever Mac mentioned this.
Which brings us to warm peanuts . . . Summer has finally arrived in DC. I couldn't believe I was still wearing jeans in late May but June has come roaring in. Wednesday night was about 95°. Here's Mac cooling his brow with a beer.
(Just so you know, this is the man who is proposing we travel to a part of China nicknamed "the furnace" in July.)
I survived my second full semester as a graduate student and left for Costa Rica a mere 8 hours after finishing a 4-hour macroeconomics exam (got an "A" but yuck!). I hadn't packed before the exam so got very little sleep before the trip.
We made up for it over the course of 11 days in San Jose (capital city), La Fortuna (rainforest & active volcano), Monteverde / Santa Elena (cloud forest) and Brasilito / Playa Conchal (little village & beautiful Pacific coast beach). Photos will be posted as soon as I get them back (I still use old fashioned film for non-web applications). At some point, I had dreams of developing a travel log that would capture my trips in detail, but you can see that I haven't gotten very far.
I didn't, however, do much running. I squeezed in a short (very sweaty) run at the beach on Sunday morning and did a 5 or 6 mile run last night, but I missed two long runs with the group. Even though we hiked most days in Costa Rica, I'll be counting on residual fitness to get me through my 8-mile run this weekend.
Well, this particular Sunday, I went to an early yoga class. Upon returning, I began picking up the clutter in the living room and then, at about 11:30 am, went looking for the broom and mop. Mac had them in the basement and he wasn't done with them, he said. So, I went back upstairs and found more clutter to eradicate (it never ends, but you know that too). Twenty or thirty minutes later, I go back downstairs. This is what I found:
Notice how the shower walls are all missing from the bathroom and are stacked up in the hall way while Mac is working on the drywall behind the seal that has been leaking (and we've been periodically re-sealing) for months. Note too, that the guests are scheduled to arrive in two hours.
I told him "I'm going to take the broom now. I think I'll probably be done with it before you are actually ready for it."
. . . but only the fair trade organic kind. 
My reasons are self-serving. The only dessert I've ever cared about is chocolate. The good stuff is more satisfying in smaller quantities than the cheap stuff. The student co-op in the basement of the union sells lots of chocolate. I'm picky and only like Divine and only buy the 45g bar ($1 and I can't be trusted with 100g bar all at once). That my chocolate choices do not encourage childhood slavery in West Africa makes my conscience happy too.
I started drinking coffee when I was 14 and started getting up for high school at the same time as my Dad got up to go to work. He had a carpool arrangement where he was in charge of the coffee so there was always a fresh pot at 6:15 am. I've gone from drinking Folgers automatic drip with non-dairy creamer to french press, fair trade, organic medium roast.
According to Global Exchange, "The United States consumes one-fifth of all the world's coffee, making it the largest consumer in the world. But few Americans realize that agriculture workers in the coffee industry often toil in what can be described as "sweatshops in the fields." Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt." [1]
So what is this Fair Trade thing?
"Fair trade means that farmers, workers, and artisans:
1. receive a sufficient price under direct long-term contracts,
2. are small-scale producers in democratic co-ops (coffee, cocoa, bananas, fruits, crafts) or workers on larger farms who receive a living wage and can bargain collectively (tea, bananas, fruits),
3. don't use abusive child labor or forced labor, and
4. use ecologically sustainable methods. " [2]
Fair trade coffee is even available in my grocery store now! But Dean's Beans roasts some nice stuff too.
The co-op sells nice coffee too but I have to stop buying it there. I stopped drinking coffee nearly two years ago because it messes with my digestion. 
But it's hard to break a 15 year pattern. A few weeks ago, a friend made a lovely pot of premium french press coffee. I had a little sip - it was so very good. A couple weeks later, we went on a "camping trip" (sleepover + hiking) and he did it again. This time I cracked and had my own cup. I have since bought my very own one-cup french press and have given myself permission to drink coffee once a day. Even though an early afternoon cup with a little chocolate bar is very lovely, the second cup of coffee pushes me over the edge.
Some Choice Tea, also fair trade, organic and available at the co-op, especially Earl Gray, goes very well with chocolate too.
I got an email this morning with photographs from the little blond kid's prom.
Refinancing the mortgage and renovating the basement (still trying to line up a contractor and architect) also make me feel old.
I've gotten behind in the blog. This is why:
We're renovating the basement. In order to renovate it, we have to waterproof it. So these guys came and dug up the yard.
But before they filled the holes and poured the contcrete, the skies opened and we had this:
Yuk.
They came back and finished. Last week made renting looking pretty good.
which is what I set out to do this morning.
It was kind of a soft goal. I set it at the 2-mile marker when I crossed at 20:13.
Unfortunately, I didn't really pick up the pace (at all) in the next two miles and crossed the 4-mile marker at 40:26.
With a little less than 20 minutes remaining to meet my goal, I picked up the pace and managed to run the fifth mile in 9:26 - still not quite fast enough - I was going to have to run the sixth mile in about 8:30 in order to get that .2 of the 6.2 race in under the 1 hour mark.
I didn't pull it off. My sixth mile was 9:00 even and my final time was 1:00:25. So close.
because the fog over the tidal basin by the Jefferson Memorial at dusk this evening was just really cool.
If you read carefully, you'll notice that I compose blog entries while running. It makes sense since that's when I do some of my best (or at least most deluded) thinking. I've made several major life decisions while running.
3:51
PM 
Partly Cloudy 56°F
Too many runners to count.
At 4pm today, half a dozen news trucks had already camped out along the mall (my running route) to secure their spots for the requisite live spot during the evening news and their post-"State of the Union" stand-up reports. Between Jefferson and Madison on 4th Street, I counted 28 police vehicles (16 cars, 8 bikes, and 4 motorcycles). By the time I ran past again, the mob of dark blue had more or less dispersed but the stragglers had been joined by another couple of news trucks.
Of the 5 years I've lived in DC, I think I've run on the mall before the president's State of the Union address three times. How odd.
I took a yoga class and the instructor pumped up the heat. After about a half hour, my legs, more or less, melted. Good for flexibility but makes for a very wobbly
pose.
Every instructor is has his/her own style and I haven't taken too many classes with this one. It took me a couple of tries to figure out what, from here:
, "place your hands on the earth, pivot your rear foot in, and swing your front foot high in the air" means. It looks basically like this: 
(only with the arm attached).
After that, I took a soak in the hot tub.
Then I took a cool shower.
Then I walked home in the cold.
The amazing thing about the human furnace is that after about 15 minutes, my eyes had adjusted and I was so warm that my hand were sweaty and I was considering removing my gloves.
Runners World can help you decide what to wear too. Although I always add a neck gater (in periwinkle, please) if it's cold enough for gloves and a hat. There's something about not having wind hit the back of my neck that just makes me much happier.
Usually when you run on the national mall in Washington DC, there are dozens of other runners out there with you. I don't know why, but not tonight.
It wasn't that cold; 32° is lovely for running. The park service plows the paths so after a snow fall, it's one of the only off-road paths that's certain to be cleared. The mall was in pretty good shape tonight (packed snow and gravel, no ice) but only a few hardy tourists milled about among the office workers hurrying across the mall to the metro.
When I say the mall was desolate, I mean that I only counted 6 other runners.
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Washington Post has an infuriating article about how greed is keeping the world from seeing one of the best documentaries about the civil rights movement. If you ever get a chance to see Eyes on the Prize, don't pass it up. I haven't even seen all of it, only the segment on Freedom Summer '64.
That and Berkley in the 60's were documentaries I saw during my sophmore year in college that lead me to believe that student activism inevitably changes the activist - how can it not!
5. Make the Bug Blog more socially relevant.
Considering how much time I spend thinking about social issues, it's striking how little I've put in the blog. There are a couple of reasons for that . . . . I'm not a political junky like some people I know. I don't follow the personalities and the pundits so I don't have a witty retort for all their foibles. And, nothing becomes irrelevant as fast as politics. Guess I'll have to work around that. So let's get started.
Should chemicals really be innocent until proven guilty?
We've know for years that fumes released from overheating polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE or Teflon®) coated cookware are toxic to birds (See Dupont's rebuttal citing anecdotal evidence about how other household hazards are more dangerous to birds and featuring a pretty little parrotlet hen - not mine). Now "EPA is seeking as much as $300 million in fines from chemical giant DuPont Co. . . . for failing to report its studies of the possible dangers linked to"(1) the Teflon® manufacturing process. Apparently, Dupont has contaminated drinking water in West Virginia and Ohio with a chemical used to make teflon that has potentially significant but as yet unclear effects on human health. The Environmental Working Group is accusing EPA of being too wimpy on the issue - likely.
Most people refer to all non-stick cookware as Teflon®, but Teflon® is a trademark name and PTFE is found on lots of products made by companies that don't use the name. It's on household appliances, upholstery, and carpeting to make it easier to clean. It's used in industrial processes, it's released into the environment, and it's not regulated at all. It's not alone.
Want to scare yourself s**tless? Checkout EWG's Body Burden report on the chemicals found in people. Teflon and other chemicals that suddenly make headlines when a new study highlights how little we know about their effect on human health indicate a bigger problem - the ridiculous way that the U.S. regulates chemicals. By the time we're concerned about a chemical it's ubiquitous - PCBs, DDT, etc. The government needs to revoke the innocent until proven guilty policy and require extensive pre market testing.
Now what? Man, I wish I had the answer.
I'll just do these backwards so the pattern is consistent.
4. Water the plants
It's harder than it sounds.
3. Teach the bird to come on command.
Bug and I have started clicker training. She's too fast for me. She's got step up on the stick and bite the popsicle stick down. I need a plan.
You might be asking "how is this relevant?" Manners and other useful behaviors can be taught using the same technique as clicker training but tends to work better if the bird has mastered a few tricks and knows the routine.
2) Run 26.2 miles on October 30, 2005
Can you tell I like big goals? I ran the Marine
Corps Marathon in 2001 and have run a bunch of 10Ks and a couple of 10 milers
since. 
However,
when I last ran it I thought "every four years seems about right"
and, low and behold, it's 2005.
The AIDS Marathon Training Program, who I trained with in 2001, advocates a very low milleage approach. We averaged fewer than 18 miles a week including the marathon and a 26 mile training run - which is good for my knees. In 2001, the program raised $3 million for the Whitman-Walker Clinic - which is good for a lot of medical care.
I have so many. I'm not sure that's it's all possible but hey, how many New Year's Resolutions are? Maybe if I broadcast them into cyberspace, I'll feel more accountable for them.
1.) Loose 30 pounds before I turn 30
Hummm. I've been tracking my diet on
I recommend it for anybody regardless of whether you want to loose weight. It's
educational - from a getting to know yourself point of view. It's tedious when
you get started but if your diet is repetitive like mine, it gets faster. I
sat down and calculated some common home-prepared meals - like pasta with homemade
sauce and Mac's stirfry - and created custom entries for them. I don't bother
adjusting for when Mac substitutes tempeh for tofu - close enough. It's all
an estimate anyway. I find that holding myself accountable for what I eat, reduces
mindless munching. It also helps me focus on finding the nutrition in my food.
Lastly, it makes me dread eating out - so much harder to calculate - which isn't
a bad thing for my budget, really.
I've used the site periodically for the last couple of years. I tend to enter stuff for a month and then go six months without doing it and then decide I need to check up on myself again. When I first started, I was training for the ill-fated DC Marathon and discovered I wasn't eating enough fat - can you believe it? So I started eating more nuts and lowfat, rather than nonfat, yogurt. There's a function for publishing your diet log online but I don't see that happening.
According to their calculator "The deadline for your goal is 258 days (36 weeks, 6 days) away. To meet your goal you need to lose about 0.814 lb per week." That's actually entirely reasonable.
To loose one pound of fat, you have to burn 3500 more calories than you eat.
So, I have to burn 407 calories more per day than I eat. That's the equivalent of running about 3 miles a day. Since that's a bit tough on my knees, I'll have to substitute in some biking & yoga.
Wow, this is getting long. Should I unveil these one day at a time?
Some good resources:
The Healthy
Body Calculator - the best "how much do I need to eat?" calculator
that I've found
Activity
Calorie Calculator - find out how many calories you burn in one minute of
water polo (or a bunch of other stuff.)
I just got back my photos from our family vacation in St. Lucia. They are posted here.
We were surprised by how few birds we saw on our hikes and tours on the southwest corner of the island near Soufriere. The answer to our inquiries was that birds don't like the smell of the nearby sulphur springs . Oh.
There were lots of birds at the resort (my parents were seriously splurging) stealing anything they could off the breakfast table. Here are a couple of shots from our balcony and at afternoon tea.
Lesser Antillean Bullfinch (male & female)
Incoming! 
Got it! 
Boxing day is a school holiday and Christmas (not celebrated as a religious holiday by many Sri Lankans) was a day a the beach for many families. We snorkeled on the shallow reef and ate prawns and curry for lunch.
We stayed in a lovely little private home just across Galle road belonging to Rohana "Roy" De Zoyza and family. The house, Piya Nivasa, had been in Roy's family for three generations and was built by his great grandfather. I don't know if it is still there.
Tsunami Relief through the Sri Lanka Association of Washington DC or Oxfam International
It's the first time we've had a Christmas tree of our very own, so we had to share.
The bird thinks it's enormous.
Happy Holidays.
There's been some concern expressed because of the December 5th entry that I may not be getting my schoolwork done. Rest assured that I completed that paper and am confident that it is a good one.
I took a statistics exam last night and have one take-home essay exam and an econ exam to go yet. I have resorted to studying in the student lounge some. Bug just doesn't get the concept of finals. If I'm home, it must be time to play right? I'm doing better than the poor guy who slept in the lounge last night though - ouch.
I wouldn't expect another entry for a couple of days, at least.
Birdie's First Road Trip
This was my view on Thanksgiving morning. I actually spent most of it reading Terry Pratchett's Soul Music aloud to Mac. (More puns than usual but very funny.)
Traffic was ok until we got just north of NY City and then it slowed to a crawl. Bug didn't care.
She was in her travel cage which had an exact replica of her swing (center - only this time secured to the cage with clothes pins so it didn't whack her when ever we turned), her favorite leather chew toy (not visible in the picture - click here), and her tent (same - click here).
She had a couple dishes of food and some broccoli to shred. All and all, it was an ok way to spend the day.
(Click here to see a larger photo of my sweetie pie.)
The people, though, were tired and and a little bit crabby by the end of it. Especially since we'd forgotten all the maps and couldn't decide whether we should find an alternate route without them.
We were supposed to leave at 6 AM but scrapped that plan at about midnight the night before. We hit the road around 7:15 AM but didn't get to West Hartford until almost 4 PM.
(View from the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson)
More pictures of Bug not caring about the traffic.
First eating, then chewing on the twine I used to re enforce the cage joint, then sitting on the clothespin that I used to clip the swing to the cage - go figure.
I'm not sure when this photo was taken. The icing on the Care Bear birthday cake has Jennifer written on it so I'm guessing it was September of 1984.
Last week, the kid on the right announced that she is going to have one of her own in May.
This 2nd photo was taken a mere 19 years later (Sept 2003) at Kathleen & Kurt's wedding.
Congrats guys.
more wedding photos
Your product has been delivered to the Apple Retail Store and is ready for pick up.
. . . . .Apple"
Importance: High [no kidding, I need to write a paper this weekend.]
Even when they're broken, they're easier than PCs. I love Apples.
However, I'm not wild about the Genius Bar in the Apple retail stores and I'm not the only one. Last night there was just one really slow person on and a lot of people waiting in line. At 7pm, the next available appointment was the following day. I already knew the computer just needed to be shipped back to Apple for repair because I'd spoken Phil at Applecare who had started a case file for me after I waited on hold for only a couple of minutes. Since I wasn't going to be around for DHL to pickup my computer, Phil suggested I take it to a retail location and have them ship it. It took a really long time for the "genius" in Clarendon, Virginia to take my information, print an invoice, and put my computer in a box.
Hopefully, I get the computer back before final exams next week.
coming soon. This entry has been delayed due to technical difficulties involving the Ibook Logic Board Repair Extension Program.
when you find a little baggie of almonds and chocolates in your office after deciding to give up chocolate for a month. I had to walk out of the room while I decided what to do. I gave away the chocolates and ate the almonds.
The thing about owning a house and being a graduate student is that you have no money but, when the roof leaks, it's still your problem.
Consequently, we spent Saturday up on the roof hunting for holes, patching them, and re coating the roof with waterproof coating.
How's that for a non-sentimental view of the capitol:
Click here for a 180° view from our roof.
So Jeanne passed through DC leaving mud which means that at the end of a long ride to campus, I'm covered in it 
.
It's really quite a lovely ride along the river this time of year.
A few weeks ago, I spilled tea on my laptop 
and the trackpad kind of stopped working. Specifically, it got stuck in the click down position. 
We took it into the store where the guy at the "genius bar" said that it sounded like a spilled something on it and that wasn't covered by care. He estimated $600 to fix it. 
Next stop 
where I buy a "new" top case thing with the trackpad and speakers and stuff for $20 from some guy with a dead ibook which I manage to install myself (probably voiding the care warrenty ).
But the keyboard still wasn't right. 
The space bar was a little sticky but I decided to live with it until
. . . the 
sto ed working. So $50 on later, I have a "new" keyboard too.
I decided to keep the old one as a backup since it might only need a good cleaning. In fact, I look under the where I find one tiny birdseed. Now I wonder who put that there? 
So there was a sign in the Maryland Food Collective on the baked goods shelf today that said:
Isn't that second part implied?
The guy next to me in line didn't find it nearly as amusing as I did.
Biking across the University of Maryland campus during a class change is a little like being inside a computer game. The undergraduate population walks as though they do not need to be across campus in 5 minutes (even though they might) and have no where in particular that they need to be; there are a lot of them; they are frequently listening to music or talking on the phone (paying no attention to the cyclist); and they could change direction and cross your path at any moment.
The other thing you notice when you are on a bike is how many of the paths have stairs in them. I can just bump down along the grass but if I had to use a wheel chair or had mobility issues, I'd be really angry.
I've been biking in 1-2 times a week. It's great, takes about an hour, and combines exercise and commute - very efficient.
Researched bird cages - you don't really want the details - we're going to spend what seems like crazy money to replace Bug's hand-me-down cockatiel cage (right) with worn paint and bent bars (we bent them because she kept finding spots where she could stick her head through - eek). Follow link to new cage. Need help finding Bug in the picture to the right even with the circle? Click here for a larger shot of Bug.
At 8:45 am, a mouse crossed straight across the livingroom.
Cheeky bastard. We've had a problem with mice since we moved in here 5 years ago. The whole block has them (rowhouses). They go in cycles.
We see a mouse. We pretend we didn't.
We see another mouse and start hunting for possible mouse entry points to the house.
We see another mouse and some mouse droppings. We set a bunch of traps and kill some mice.
We find what we think is the elusive mouse entry point and plug it up . . and wait, because sooner or later . . .
We see a mouse.
Bird seed and peanut butter is very effective mouse bait. Steel wool stuffed in cracks under the baseboard and then sealed in there with caulk or joint compound keeps out mice . . . for a while.
Last time we had mice was right before I picked up Bug. I caught 3 mice in one night and Mac discovered a crack behind the refridgerator. Looks like they found another way in.
So on Saturday mornings, I run. A friend and I signed up with a group that meets a the pentagon to train for marathons & half-marathons on Saturday mornings. Right now, we are meeting at 6am (ouch). I'm only doing the half mileage distance, so I'm done before 8. We don't run very fast, so we talk while we run.
This morning the discussion had many topics including how a small green bird(who's currently bathing in her water dish) that weighs less than an ounce can have a profound effect on your life; as can your boss when she calls and tells you she wants you out on the road covering the Kerry/Edwards campaign for the next three months, which apparently happened to my friend on Friday. She's taking it in stride (pun intended).
My life is also in flux. In two weeks I quit my job at PIRG, where I've worked since I graduated from college, to go back to school at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. Hmm.
By the way, Bug's blood tests all came back fine.
We live in DC so the wildlife mostly consists of squirrels and sparrows.
This morning, I awoke to the sound of birds in distress outside my window. Poked my head around the curtain and saw a white flash - I'm thinking cat. I head for the backyard to have a look.
There's a blue jay hoping around under the picnic table and another 4-5 in the dead tree next door and they are agitated. I'm thinking the one on the ground is hurt (no sign of cat). But as I approach, he flies of to the dead tree with the others.
I wander back up to the deck and watch them.
One by one they move from the tree in the right neighbor's yard to the tree in the left neighbor's yard (we don't have anything taller than tomatoes) screaming the whole way. Then I see it - the possum.
Apparently, the flock of jays were pursuing him around the neighborhood. He was unimpressed.
From the wilds of DC . . . .
Water in my shoes makes my toes slip. I laugh.
