Christmas observations

1. The family dog Gryphon is bad at posing for photos.


2. Foods that I make that look good...

...don't always taste good.


3. Fortunately, the rest of the family has good cooking skills:


4. My dad and cousin Josh share a mutual love of cameras:


5. Dad and his brother look nothing alike:


6. Lemon poundcake needs to spend less time on the plate and more time in my belly:


7. I am more flexible that Cousin Josh.


8. I cannot lift Uncle Dick's 18-pound gun (that he made himself).


9. I have a great network of family and friends who spoil me with lovely presents and shower me with love.

10. It is hard to (a) read for my Master's Exam and (b) run as much as I want during the holidays. Fail.

That was an uneven account of the holidays, and I hope no one is offended that I left out several things that have happened over the past few days. That said, this is my blog, and I do what I want.

My knee and pride hurt.

I set off for a six miles this morning. I tried to do running with a few walking intervals to get through the really icy patches.

Unfortunately, as I vaulted myself over a bank of plowed snow and ice, I lost my footing and went sprawling onto the sidewalk.

Not only did I scrape my knee, but I ripped a hole in the knee of my favorite (and only) tights! I am so sad because they were (1) fuzzy-lined and warm and (2) just the right length. (Most tights are too long for my stubby, little legs and make me look like a wrinkly seal.)


I also banged my elbow, which started to bleed.


I fell about halfway through my run, so I took time to assess whether I wanted to keep going. None of my injuries affected my stride or my running, so I kept going with a torn open knee. (Blood started drying in the fuzzy lining of my tights. Yum!) I feel hardcore, but I'm really sad about the tights.

When I went sprawling onto the sidewalk, I had just passed an intersection in the sight line of several cars who were waiting for the light to change. No one even rolled down their windows to ask if I was okay. Perhaps no one saw me go flying, but if they did, I think it's really inconsiderate to not even ask in passing. What would you do if you someone slip on ice while running?

(For the record, my mom said that they probably thought, "Serves you right for trying to run in these conditions!", but I don't think that attitude excuses their lack of concern. After all, it's almost Christmas.)

I hope all those unconcerned people get poop in their stockings.

Dirty snow and ice.

The boyfriend and I made it home safely to Richmond. Both of our flights were somewhat delayed, but I won't complain too much.

Unfortunately, yesterday's 1:45am wake-up call left me dragging for most of the afternoon and evening. This coincided with a dinner party for the families (mine and Mom's boyfriend's), and by the end, I was glassy-eyed and dirty-haired.

I slept until 10am this morning and went for a late run. The sidewalks here are in pretty bad shape; most of them are covered with ice and packed snow.

I got out about a mile before heading home and putting on my YakTrax. They helped a lot, mostly because they kept me from slipping on the icy patches. (I'm afraid of ice-related sprains.)

Here are my splits:

• Mile 1 - 10:41(Wheee! Running in the snow is fun!)
  
• Mile 2 - 10:50 (Ow, I have no traction!)
  
• Mile 3 - 10:05 (F this shit!)
  
• Mile 4 - 9:55
• Mile 5 - 9:54
  

I also used my fancy hair straightener without burning myself!

(YakTrax drying in the background)

It looks different. I swear.

This is a change of plans.

After we spent several minutes (=30) on the phone getting the flights changed, I had an extra day to blow doing fun stuff.


I ran five miles, though not very well. I had to stop and stretch a few times because my legs and body felt really fatigued. Thus, these splits are deceptively negative.

• Mile 1 - 10:22
• Mile 2 - 9:58
• Mile 3 - 9:42
• Mile 4 - 9:33
• Mile 5 - 9:21

The boyfriend and I tried the "local" pancake house:


Liz and I, despite the snow, enjoyed some tasty fro-yo:



Then I went to bed at 9pm and slept really poorly. Unfortunately, we have a 2:30am wake-up call so we can leave the apartment by 3:30am, get to the airport by 4:45am, and take off at 5:4am. Holiday travel is awesome.

Random rant: Has anyone else received the Runner's World 2010 calendar? Apparently, this year, Rodale sent out a postcard a few months ago asking subscribers if they wanted to receive the free preview of the calendar. If you did not want the calendar, you were supposed to check a "no" box on the postcard and return it. (I had to find this information in a thread on the Runner's World forums.)

I don't remember getting this postcard, so I am pretty upset that I received this "free preview" that I am supposed to buy or send back. Sending this back is an inconvenience because I don't have time to take it to a post office and I have nothing in which to ship it. (Thanks to Rodale's shitty-ass packaging, it is impossible to use the original envelope.)

Rodale is relentless about sending out spam e-mails advertising their books, training guides, and miscellaneous who-the-fuck-cares products, so I am none too happy about receiving this unsolicited calendar. Considering that Runner's World just wrote a nice, long article about the contributions of the late Ardath Rodale to the publishing industry, I think it's really hypocritical that the publishing company bearing her name has resorted to such underhanded marketing techniques.

I e-mailed customer service explaining that I did not recall receiving this postcard from Runner's World. I got an impersonal e-mail back, apologizing for the error, and telling me to return my Prevention calendar by printing the free return shipping label. (Yeah, um, I don't subscribe to Prevention. Thanks for caring.)

Rodale, if you are listening, this is not enough. This is your mistake, not mine. It should not be the responsibility of the customer to fix the company's error. I'm done with you and your crappy marketing techniques. I will not be subscribing to Runner's World in the future. My money can be spent elsewhere, supporting companies that value their customers.

Change of plans.

We were set to fly home tomorrow (Saturday), but this got in the way:


It's not all that disappointing. Our original travel plans were quite complicated (train to Chicago, train to Milwaukee, flight to Baltimore, drive home to Richmond), so this simplifies things a lot.

At least I had a decent run today. I did one mile alone and then joined Lena for five more.

• Mile 1 - 9:54
• Mile 2 - 9:53
• Mile 3 - 9:45
• Mile 4 - 9:55
• Mile 5 - 9:51
• Mile 6 - 10:02
  

I blame the positive splits on the fact that I manually stopped my watch at lights during the first few miles and tried auto-pause (FAIL!) on the last few. Oh well.

Richmond, I'll see you soon! For now, sleep.

Farkin' finally!

I turned in my last of three final papers today. Finally. I promptly did some Christmas errands and bought The Tudors (Season 3) on DVD because post-finals is the best time to enjoy glaring historical inaccuracies!

This afternoon, in preparation for my "holiday party" with Lena, I baked brownies with Peppermint Patties. I was afraid that I would over-bake them, so I erred on the side of under-baking.

A lot of under-baking, but that seems to be okay with everyone but me. Fortunately, the rest looked like squares and not piles of gooey mush. (Hullo, salmonella!)


For dinner, Lena and I feasted on pad thai in our holiday socks:


While her cat Sebastian joined us for a screening of "Julie & Julia."


Then we exchanged presents! I gave Lena a frame with photos from our 2009 running highlights:


Since I just got my hair cut, Lena presented me with my very own (and first!) straightening iron and some fancy spray to prep my follicles. She also promised to help me not burn myself as I learn to use this sophisticated lady tool!


Certainly the best way to celebrate the end of my final papers! Thanks, RB!

Now, off to bed.

Hard sciences vs. semi-rigid humanities

An excerpt from the boyfriend's answers to the take-home exam on field theory:

(Click to enlarge)

A sweet-ass drawing I made and considered putting in my final paper on vowel harmony:

(This is supposed to show how the orientation of F1 along the y-axis and F2 along the x-axis can be roughly mapped onto a cross-section of a mouth as well as the vowel space in French.)

Can you guess whose discipline makes more money?

The weather outside is frightful.

...but writing final papers about vowel harmony is so delightful.

For Matt:


Note: Come February, I will think that 12ºF is plenty warm, as I'm sure many of you already do. However, Matt and I are having a competition to see who can complain more about the weather.

Myotonic dystrophy and you!

Yesterday, I cautiously pushed my long run to seven miles. I'm still trying to be on the alert for indications of IT-band irritation, but fortunately, I got through all seven miles without a flare-up. Here are my splits:

• Mile 1 - 10:38
• Mile 2 - 10:23
• Mile 3 - 10:01
• Mile 4 - 9:58
• Mile 5 - 9:46
• Mile 6 - 9:45
• Mile 7 - 9:39
• 0.11-mile - 1:03

I signed up to be a pace leader for the Illinois Half Marathon training group this year. Supposedly, this means that I should run even splits to keep the Half newbies in check. Maybe some of them will want to run negative splits with me?

I barely left the apartment today because (1) it was my day off and (2) I finished my second paper. Just one more to go.

In lieu of interesting photos, I will leave you with a video I made in high school about the symptoms of congenital myotonic dystrophy, featuring not one but TWO of my homecoming dates. I am offensive.

Crazy dog lady.

Saturday's trifecta

All in all, today was a good day.

• Lena invited me as her guest to the "Power Body Flow" class at the local gym. What does the "power" part mean? A one hour, thirty minute class of realizing that I suck at stretching and basic strength. At least I dressed appropriately:

• I roasted chestnuts for the first time today. They were tasty. The song about roasting them on an open fire irritates me.

I had to cross-hatch one side so they wouldn't explode in the oven.

It looked like a hairy brain.

• I received two care packages today. Mom and Gryphon (the dog) sent me tea bags and hot cocoa mix. In the card, Mom wrote sweet mom things, and Gryphon reported that he had not mangled my stuffed childhood toy.

The second care package was from Charlotte. She sent me this awesome Frenchie print. I normally think dog kitsch is weird, but Frenchies are classy enough to pull it off! Thanks, Charlotte!


Paper-writing madness tomorrow. I'm stressed that I didn't get enough done today, but it'll get written. It has to.

Easily distracted by basically everything.

As any student will attest, during finals period, pretty much everything seems more interesting and worthwhile than sitting down and actually cranking out that final paper on ____. (Today's riveting topic was the development of liaison in modern French. Oh wait, what? You fell asleep?)

Of more interest than my paper today were (in no particular order, since they were equally distracting):

• Frenchie friend's new bed! Since I sometimes do the right thing and try to support small/local businesses, I ordered this dog duvet from Molly Mutt. Basically, you get a mesh sack to fill with all kinds of old, soft things (clothes, stuffed animals, towels, etc.) that would otherwise be discarded:
  

As an added bonus, the bed smells like you!
I hear dogs like this.

Then you cover it with a super hip duvet cover:

(Robots for a male dog, obviously.)

• Writing Christmas cards.

• Running five kick-ass miles in the early evening darkness with Lena.

• The box of fueling goodies that I won in Lisa's first giveaway:

Thanks, Lisa! I'm really excited to try out some of these fancy goodies!

• And finally, finding out that in the past two months, almost nothing has happened in the search for my birth parents. A social worker from my Korean agency informed me that she had not yet begun trying to contact my birth mother because she was still waiting to receive the letter and photos for my birth family that I sent to my US adoption agency back in October. (The two agencies work together, so I mostly correspond with the US side of things.)

Obviously, I was disappointed to hear that my US agency had not yet sent my letter and photos. The disappointed feeling lasted all of five seconds, after which, I cried some hot tears of frustration and promptly updated my Facebook status to say that I hoped that the social worker at my US agency would fall in a manhole.

This morning, I called my US adoption agency and politely asked if she had sent out my stuff yet. She told me that she had "just recently" sent the hard copy versions to the agency in Korea. Yes, despite the fact that we are no longer living in an era of wood-block printing, getting hard copies of a letter and two photos apparently took nearly two months. (It is still profoundly unclear to me why the documents must be printed here and sent overseas by snail mail. Efficiency fail!)

I asked my US social worker if she could provide a rough estimate for how long the rest of the search would take. She said that everything was slow and busy for the holiday season but that things should calm down after the New Year.

I keep reminding myself that I have no control over this situation. Apparently, it is common for months to pass before the Korean agency receives the documents from its corresponding US agency.

...That said, I paid a not insignificant (litotes!) fee to my US agency back in early February to initiate this search. I didn't hear anything until I got cranky and called in October. And if my case isn't resolved by this coming February, I am supposed to pay for another year's worth of searching. This is a standard, though frustrating, procedure.

Everyone says that you must be very persistent and pro-active in your search, so though I will keep in mind my non-control, the current plan is to:

1. Not let an unreasonable amount of time go by where I don't hear anything.
2. Send a syrupy sweet Christmas card to my US social worker hoping that she'll feel really guilty and get crackin' on my search. Because that's what Christmas cards are for...obviously.
   

Lots of pictures for the ADD.

Check out the weather this morning:


That's right. Winds gusting to 52mph. (Fortunately, it probably wasn't that bad in the actual city.) It was a pretty intense run, but I felt really hardcore when I finished an easy three-miler. After basically confirming that I have ITB issues, I'm going to try to stay close to the apartment in case the pain flares up and I need to walk home.

Check out the forecast:


A whopping 9ºF tonight!

My new article for Smile Politely is up. It's about starting my search for my biological parents.

Speaking of adoption, I think I might plan a trip to Korea for this summer. Apparently, that's the best way to get the ball rolling on your search. Plus, the boyfriend and I have never taken a big trip together, so this might be fun! Now, just finding a way to fund this adventure...

Frenchie friend's dog crate and crate pad finally arrived. I set it up and promptly tried to get in it.

It has two doors.



I tried a complicated two-door reverse maneuver. It didn't work.




While I was wriggling around on the floor, the boyfriend said that I looked like a beached sea creature.

He couldn't do any better though.




For dinner, I made jjajang myun (Recipe linked), which basically looks like disgusting sludge on noodles:


It doesn't look any better when it gets mixed together:


Fortunately, it is tasty black sludge. I'm pleased with my handiwork in the kitchen.

I am not pleased with my academic handiwork today. In the forecast for tomorrow? Frigid temperatures and paper-writing fury.