Stupid Internet Wednesday

We had our BIG MEETING at work yesterday, and it was a success.  I wasn't actually involved in the presentation, but it's still a huge relief to have it over.  Which makes it the perfect time for some dumb humor.

This one's been going around for awhile, but it still cracks me up:

Instead of using the microwave for making dinner like I normally do, last night it was the stage for an epic battle- MORTAL PEEP FIGHT.

Here are our two contestants in Peep Joust 2011.  I've got my money on the one on the left.

Sadly, our microwave has this anti-fun screen so you can't really see how massive they got.  Also, it would have been easier to see which one "won" if they were different colors.

Definitely not as good as the original:

Have a good Wednesday, kids.

Re-boot

The weekend always goes by too fast, but I think I'm ready to get back at it.

• Breakfasts and lunches are ready for the week.
• Work clothes and gym clothes are out and/or packed.
• I've got 8 minutes before I have to throw them on before I catch the bus for the gym.
• I actually made a decent dinner for us last night for the first time in awhile:

Baked salmon + asparagus ala Real Simple

• I'm pumped up to rock 5 reps at 95lbs (that's a 25 on each side!) on the bench press at the gym this morning.
• And then I'm planning to work from about 7:45am-6:30pm, which I know a lot of you do regularly, but it's going to be a long day for me.
• But at 7pm I'm going to a work dinner at a Thai restaurant down the street.
• And then I get to turn around and be back at work at 7am tomorrow for our BIG MEETING.
• Daniel's alarm is going off, which is my cue to get dressed, pack up, and head out the door.

Have a good Monday, all.

Still here

Wow, it was a busy week at the statistics ranch, and it looks like it will continue to be that way until the beginning of May.  I feel like I only have so much brain power, and when I spend all day frantically trying to herd SAS output into Excel tables, I don't have much left over for blogging.  Plus it makes me feel really boring.  So yeah... I've been a bad blogger, blog reader, and commenter, and I'm not expecting that to improve much over the next month.  But you, dear reader, I still love your blog.  I promise I'm not neglecting you, even if I'm too boring to come up with a good comment.

There have been a few fun and/or interesting things that happened in the past week.

Not my actual carotid artery, but that's
what it looked like.

1. I got to see a part of my anatomy that few people have seen before: my carotid artery.  One of our sister studies is doing carotid IMT measurements on participants, and they needed volunteers to get some practice images, so I signed up.  Basically, they ultrasound both sides of your neck to look for plaque buildup in the artery before and after it splits in two.  I'd never had an ultrasound done before so I was surprised by how uncomfortable it was.  Not painful or anything but on the order of getting your teeth cleaned.  One side went pretty quickly and easily and gave a nice image like the one to the right, but my bifurcation (where the artery splits) on my right side was really high, so the examiner had to ram the ultrasound wand up under my jaw to try to get a good image.  But it was worth it to watch the video they captured of my heartbeat and see the blood pulse through the artery.  Yay, science.

2. In what sounds like a plot from The Office, I carpooled to Appleton on Friday night to see the opening of an art exhibit a coworker put together at Lawrence University (which is beautiful, BTW).  I know nothing about art, so I don't have much to say about the whole thing, but I really liked some of the pieces and it was fun to do something different.

3. But we got home really late on Friday night and I decided to skip going to race in Black Earth.  It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to chill and enjoy the sunshine and just do my normal long run around town.  Between travel and other commitments, I don't have any other races on the schedule for this spring, so I'm going to let my training happen as it will and take advantage of the opportunity to do more yoga and strength work.

4. Despite the snow storm we had on Friday (nature's cruel April Fool's joke) it seems like it's genuinely trying to be spring now.  We are forecast to crack the 60s this week and are finally getting a meaningful amount of sunshine.  Little green things (flowers?  I think I remember what those are.) are starting to sprout.

Time to get moving!  Hope you have a relaxing Sunday.        

  

Anti-mindfulness

I have a yin yoga DVD that's 70-minutes of hard core hip stretching.  You hold the poses for several minutes each.  It's intense, and I feel like it helps my recovery after a long run, but... it's kind of boring after you do it a few times.  So yesterday I turned it on with the volume on just high enough that I knew when to change the poses and did the routine while reading a book and drinking a Diet Mt. Dew.  I actually liked it a lot better that way.

I'm also trying to ignore the fact that the weather has gone all winter on us again.  That rain I was complaining about on Wednesday?  That turned out to be a mini ice storm.  And yesterday there was the following exchange at the computer science welcome weekend pizza party I crashed:

Prospective Student:  So is there anything bad about Wisconsin?
Me: Um... the fact that it's snowing on March 26...

Despite the fact that it was 10 degrees with the wind chill when I left for my long run yesterday, it went really well.  I upped the intensity by running 10 minutes easy and then picking up the pace for 20 minutes and repeating until I was done.  I finished 12 miles (including the long hill up to my apartment complex) in 1:47:27, which was an 8:57min/mile overall pace and may be the fastest I've ever done a long run.  All the "fast" portions were done between 8:30 and 8:40 min/mile pace.

The weather should be much less craptacular for the next week.  We're climbing back up to highs in the 40s (and 50s!!!), and there's not too much rain on the horizon.  I'm excited for next Saturday when I'll be running the Black Earth 10-miler for the first time.  Should be a beautiful day.

Time to get off the computer and get ready for church.  Hope you have a relaxing Sunday!

Madison... the Seattle of the Midwest

Snow, thunder snow, wintry mix, sleet, freezing rain, and just plain old rain- the kind we're getting right now.  It seems like there's always some kind of precipitation going on up here.  Fortunately this is a gym morning (tomorrow I get to decide if high 30s is too cold to run in the rain), and it was slightly windy but dry for my interval run yesterday.  It wasn't the greatest run in the world, but I'm feeling better about my paces now that I know that 1km is 0.62mi, not 0.65mi, which is what I was running.  I did 8mi total with 1k, 2k, 1k, 1k fast.  My splits for the 1k were just above the 1k paces shown on McMillan so I'm thinking the extra seconds were due to the 0.03mi extra I ran.  Or at least I'm going to just keep telling myself that :).

As of 4:45 when I went home yesterday, a big project at work was heading out the door.  I had the dreads about going back yesterday after my long weekend in Chillsville, but it was actually a non-stressful and productive day.  

We did go back to Bach around the Clock on Saturday, and I got a picture of Daniel's* radio debut:

Bach cello suites arranged for electric guitar was well received.  We also got to hear a few other talented pianists and a classical guitarist while we were there.

The "make your own takeout" theme of the week continues with Saturday night's dinner, my favorite looks-disgusting-tastes-delicious Indian dish, palak paneer.  It follows the rule that if you put enough cheese/barbecue sauce/catsup/ranch dressing/seasoning (in this case) on anything, it will taste good.  Spinach + yogurt + paneer cheese + spice pack from Indian grocery = tasty.

Last night we actually followed a recipe from an old Cooking Light for shrimp pad Thai.  It wasn't Chopstix, but I also didn't have to wait for 2 hours to get it.

And finally, another non-take out slow cooker winner, from Real Simple- Sunday's dinner- creamy chicken and biscuits dumplings.  Easy, tasty, and with plenty of leftovers for dinner tonight.

And sadly it's time for me to see if I can get my raincoat to stretch over my jacket and my backpack so I don't get soaked going to and from the gym and work.  It's really coming down... sad face. 

*streaming online 

Oh sunshine, I love you. I love you. I love you.

I love you.  Vitamin D.  I love you, too.  I feel like I understand tanning booth addictions now.  Oh to be able to lay out in the sun and feel warm all over*.  Ahhhhh... that would be great.

Today has been a wonderfully relaxing day.  I love having a second Saturday.  Daniel and I slept in, then went to the gym to do weights, had lunch out, went onto campus to check out the art museum (eh, I give it a grade C+/B), walked over to the campus Presbyterian church where the local public radio station is hosting Bach Around The Clock to celebrate Bach's birthday**, got an ice cream cone at Babcock, came back home and talked to my parents.  As soon as I'm done with this post I'm going to chill out and read my Cooking Light that just came in the mail.   

Speaking of cooking, the theme of the weekend/next week is "make your own takeout" starting with butter chicken using a spice mix we bought from an Indian grocery store last week.  It was tasty but ended up being so spicy we really couldn't eat much of the sauce.  Mmmmm, plate of red stuff.

*Note- I do not actually try to tan- mostly because I don't, I just burn- and if I ever do spend any kind of quality time in the sun I wear way more than SPF XXV.

** We're going back tonight after 8:30 so the guitar master can play some lute music on his electric guitar.  

Whew

It's the weekend.  I'm still sleepy and have been kind of a bum all day.  I did rally a bit on Thursday morning-  when I stared writing this post yesterday the "whew" was about how much better I felt after a good night's sleep- but it was still a drag to get up at normal time this morning to squeeze in a long run first thing.

Don't want to be like this guy- even if he's lucky
enough to be at the beach.

The good news is that the run went well.  It wasn't freezing, and I didn't fear being blown away by crazy March wind.
We are finally starting to see signs of spring.  A lot of the snow has melted, and the birds are back, including the surly geese.  I already saw one go after a woman on the bike path yesterday.  This was only my second double digit run of 2011 (I think) but I felt strong the whole way.  I tried running 10 minutes easy then 20 minutes harder and finished in 1:50 - a little slower than I would have liked, but I guess I'm still recovering from the DST and last week's race combo.

One last thing- I wanted to give some food link love to last month's Real Simple (which has recipes from the magazine online here).  Whatever you want to say about the rest of the magazine, the recipes are almost always truly simple and tasty.  Last month the feature was my favorite "I don't want anything but taking off my shoes to stand between me and eating dinner when I get home" appliance: the slow cooker.  One "bad" thing about many slow cooker recipes is that you actually have to cook everything before you slow cook it.  This probably makes things taste better, but it often defeats the purpose.  Both recipes we tried out (plus the others in the issue) were assemble + on.  Now I'm laughing because true to the "feed me now" nature of these dishes, I only got a picture of one before it was devoured; however, I assure you the chipole beef tacos (which we actually made with the other 1/2 of the pork roast we bought for the stir fry dish) were taste tested and approved.

Asian pork with snow peas, red peppers, and soba noodles: