How Does Your Garden Grow?

I don't have any silver bells or cockle shells or maids in a row, but I do have tomatoes.

Purple basil.

And cilantro.

There are okra, sweet basil, and pepper seedlings as well. I have very little to do with this success since we were in Texas all last week and I've been planted in front of a sky-high pile of books every waking moment. Mother nature has been watching over my garden with tender care. I'm very grateful!

I've also gotten some pretty awesome news this week as regards summer plans...

(1) We were granted an extension on our apartment lease, so we will be moving seamlessly into our next place at the beginning of August. The extension is a good thing because our lease originally ended on June 30th. So we had a month long gap between leases and I was mega stressed out imagining our life on the streets.

(2) I learned that the department can give me some money to go to Berlin in late August/early September for a workshop on Aristotle. *Nerd alert.* I'm insanely excited about this because (a) I've never been to Berlin before and (b) this workshop focuses on the stuff that I'm working on for my PhD exam and my dissertation. Heaven sent, my friends, heaven sent. The department can't foot all of the bill, but they can cover my airfare, which is a lot. So I just have to figure out how to live and eat on the cheap for 12 or 13 days. Should be easy since I don't speak German, right?

(3) The department is also able to pay for me to go to Greece in July! Yay! My favorite place on the planet! The ancient philosophers are all heading over for our annual reading group. We are going to reading Aristotle's Physics this year. (Gee, I wonder if I'll get sick of reading Aristotle at some point in my life this summer?) At first the department was able to give me only a little money for the Greece trip because they were giving funding priority to people who haven't gone before (I've been twice already. I'm a funding hog who loves to travel, okay?). But some of those people turned down the offer, so the money came to meeeee.

(4) I booked my hotel for the Marine Corps. Marathon. $75 ($93 including fees) on Priceline using Name Your Own Price! That's over 50% off! My relationship with Priceline is becoming sickly. I pretty much can't imagine any other way to book travel now.

So that's all the good news. Pretty awesome, right? Also...

(i) I am studying for my Greek exam which I am taking in a couple of weeks. It's turning me into a ball of stress who eats whole bags of chips in one sitting too much. I run to relieve some of the stress (10 miles yesterday, 6 today) and I do bathe after the runs, but I pretty much just sit around in my underwear until I have to go get the mail. My Greek is pretty much astoundingly good at this point, though. Who needs a dictionary when it's all in your brain? 

(ii) I dyed my hair dark. Very a la Elizabeth Taylor Kara Goucher. No pics right now (see (i) above).

(iii) Keith came home for one night. One night. And then left to go to another conference and then to his college reunion. The apartment is too quiet (and increasingly too messy) without him. I want my hubby back! 

Lastly...

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the storms in Oklahoma. It's an absolute nightmare, especially for the families of the missing children.

I hope there are more moments like this:

Please tell me about your week. Or just share some jokes or something generally positive. I need human contact; reading the writings of dead white guys isn't exactly a party.

Home Again

I made it home to Princeton. And I was delighted to find a couple of goodies in the mail (alongside all the credit card offers--fo real, those things get on my nerves).

My recent raid of the Lululemon "We Made Too Much" section:

The "Pump It Up" tank-bra combo. Now I have every color. #lulunatic

And I finally received my medal for placing 2nd in my age group at the Rutgers Half.

The one on the left is the age group award. It's huge!! Very nice, CGI Racing. Very nice.

Today I'm gonna veg out (read: study like a maniac), but tomorrow I'll pound some pavement. Can't wait! Can't wait! Can't wait!

I am addicted to running.

I hope you all are doing okay! I'm gonna finally catch up on blogs, I swear.

All good things come to an end

Glory, glory, hallelujah! I finally feel like myself again. Well, my runner self.

I paid $10 to use this gym for just a a couple of hours. Cheapest therapy on the market!

I ran seven miles. That's far and away the most that I've run in a week and a half. Granted, they were slow and they were on a treadmill. But running outside exposes me to too much pollen and running any faster gives me a stitch. I'll take what I can get!

Today is my last day in Texas. I'm sad to go back to Princeton. I feel like I didn't get anywhere near enough time with my family. I hate it when my mom and dad say, "I wish you could stay longer." I do too! I mean, I would go nuts if I stayed too long, but five days isn't satisfactory at all.

At least I had a chance to spend some time at their new place in the country.

Those pictures are actually from December. The place is much greener now.

And we went to a baseball game.

Me and my sweet momma with the first set of two too-big margaritas.

And I got to spend time with my new favorite man.

Princeton doesn't have any of these wonderful things. And Keith won't even be home when I get back because he's away at conferences/graduations/reunions for like five years. At least I can hang out with Meghan. Saving grace.

Okay, enough whining. I'll leave you with this video which stands as proof that my nephew is my future running buddy.

Happy Mother's Day

To the one who has truly stuck by my side through everything.

Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

Random Thoughts

This has been quite the week. It started out with the most epic Sunday Funday ever (which you can read about here).

It's peanut butter jelly time.

And in the middle it was filled with two doctors visits, four boxes of tissues, one new set of sheets, one missed party, and a (greatly unwelcome) diagnosis of allergies.

Needless to say, it's a week that I wouldn't want to replay even with the amazing Sunday.

So, yeah, I have allergies. First timer, folks. I always knew Princeton was trying to kill me. I'm just sad that it's the pretty stuff that stabbed me in the back.

Le sigh. One of the few things that I loved unconditionally and unqualifiedly about Princeton was the gorgeousness of all the foliage. That love is no longer unconditional or unqualified. I now breathe with caution.

I basically had crazy sinus infection type symptoms all week. Congestion, sore gums, lots of sneezing and coughing, yellow phlegm. I went to the doctor fully expecting to get a script for some antibiotics. Instead I was told that I've joined the allergies club. (How do I turn down this membership?!?!) Doc told me to take Claritin as well as Mucinex to break up all the nasty phlegm. I took some Mucinex and broke out in a rash on my face. Let me repeat that:

On my face. A rash.

So I went to the doctor again. This one gave me Zyrtec on the spot, script for Flonase (spelling?) or something like that (haven't picked it up yet) and some Afrin (over the counter nasal spray). She said the rash "looked like heat rash, but it's probably allergies." This made me cry. 

Because, ya know, I want to know why my skin looks and feels like a lizard's back all of the sudden. 

Doctor's response to my crying: "I think you should go talk to a psychologist right now."

I was floored. Would this bother any of you? I was extremely bothered. I complied, though, and within the next ten minutes I found myself in a psychologist's office telling her that I was sent by a doctor who apparently thought it was extremely unusual for a person to cry when they have an unexplained rash on their face. 

Psychologist's response: "Uuhh... yeah, I don't know why she did that. It sounds like you just need to take some medicine and maybe drink a lot of fluid and sleep?"

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So I've spent pretty much the whole week either on my couch or in bed. That's why I bought new sheets. When you spend a certain amount of time in a single environment, you need it to look good. (I would go crazy in prison.)

Speaking of prison... I watched the first season of Arrested Development.  Oh my gosh, how have I not become obsessed with this show already? It's amazing! Sure, it's just a series of recycled jokes, but those jokes never get old. Always money in the banana stand? Haha! I've made a huge mistake? Haha! Never-nude? Haha!

In other news...

Keith fed me pretty well this week. For the first few days, I couldn't taste anything so I just threw things at my mouth. But now that I'm back to "normal" (Allergies! I'll never be normal again!!), I'm tasting things like it's the first time.

Roasted squash with sauted chard and a poached egg.

Sundried tomato, caramelized onion, and olive pizza from Serious Eats, Vegan Experience.

Yesterday I went to the gym for thirty minutes on the bike and a pretty puny weight lifting performance (10 lunges? Yep, done. One set of 15 bicep curls? Dooone.). And today...

Today I finally laced up again...

I felt like I was in heaven (well, sort of. I'm pretty sure in real Heaven I wouldn't be stricken with fear of pollen.). I had Freakonomics Radio buzzing in my ears. The rain clouds had parted so that I could enjoy some sunshine. People were out canoeing and kayaking on the canal. And... oooh... ouch. Stitch. Got a stitch in my side.

And that stitch never went away. I ran four miles today. And I had a stitch in my side as my running buddy for the last three of them. Thanks a lot, running gods.

So now I'm sitting in the library in my department, blogging. Mostly just glad to be out of the apartment, but also pretty bummed to be a slave to Ancient Greek. My exam is in two weeks. Fingers, toes, eyes, and ears crossed. This thing is gonna be a doozy.

But if I can survive allergies, I can survive anything. 

The Pseudo-Science of Happiness

A few days ago I received an email from a gentleman who would like for me (i.e. my blog) to team up with his company that is promoting "the science of happiness."

I receive emails from business owners making these kinds of propositions periodically. I've never even responded to any of them. My blog is just a way to procrastinate and engage with other female runners. I just haven't seen any "business opportunities" that have meshed well with my laid back approach to blogging.

Anyway, so about this science of happiness thing...

This is just about the last thing in the world that I would want to get involved with.

See, researchers have recently (past ~40 years) been interested in measuring happiness and determining what factors increase or decrease happiness for individuals. Some have claimed that being wealthier than your neighbors contributes to your happiness. Some say that it is absolute, not relative, income that determines happiness (yes, they use the word "determine" which suggests they believe this is the necessary and sufficient cause of happiness--Doh!). And some have said that affluence actually undermines happiness because it sets wealthy people up for having a diminished appreciation for the little things in life (summers in the south of France make family get-togethers seem boring).

The CEO of Zappos (the online shoe retailer) wrote a book called "Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose".

Project Happiness has decided that happiness is 50% genetics.

And this guy is even saying that you can get happy just by staying focused on the present and not letting your mind wander.
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All of this irritates me. The idea of happiness being a quantifiable magnitude determined by money or genes or ability to pay attention is just ridiculous to me.

I'm on Aristotle's team with this one: Happiness is predicable of a whole life; it is a long, complicated activity that stretches across a person's whole lifetime. It isn't just that feeling of euphoria or excitement that you get when you get engaged, or eat a real French baguette for the first time, or earn a fat pay check. No, happiness isn't merely an affect like anxiety or desire. It's something much bigger, much more substantial than that.

Happiness, Aristotle says, is the living of a good life. To live well is to be happy, and living well means setting up honorable goals for yourself and doing the hard work to reach those goals virtuously. Setting up poor goals will preclude your ability to be happy, and setting up honorable goals but reaching them through cheating and vicious means will also leave you unhappy. Happiness comes only to those who plan and deliberate and make good decisions. In other words, happiness belongs only to those who live properly human or rational lives. Otherwise you are living like a cow, and we wouldn't ever seriously say that cows are happy.

When psychologists and sociologists and economists get wrapped up in the project of measuring happiness (all under the heading of "The Science of Happiness"), I think they are making a huge mistake. Really, it's a category mistake--happiness is not quantifiable as such, just as the experience of running a marathon isn't quantifiable as such. You can measure the 26.2 miles, but you cannot measure the real experience of running a marathon. In the same way, you might be able to measure how long are the lives of happy people or how much they gave to charity or how much they spent on themselves or how much or little they pay attention and don't let their minds wander. But with all of these measurements, happiness itself is still not measured. It is not a measurable thing. It is describable, but not measurable.

Beware the quantified studies of happiness.
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If you care about your well-being and you think that the pursuit of happiness is of primary importance in your life, then you are probably already on the right track to living a fulfilling life. I think that people who take time to consider what would make them happy are already living human, rational lives. Already separated from the cows. From there, it's just a matter of determining how you want your life to go and then setting out to chase that dream.

The Best Day Ever - A.K.A. The Day My Running Buddy Got a BQ

So yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. Which usually means I'm playing the "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor" game.

But this year was different.

I had a marathon to go cheer for.  More specifically, I had a particular marathoner to go cheer for.

Meghan!

Meghan ran her very first marathon yesterday. She was nervous and worried about whether or not she trained properly and afraid she might throw up or poop her pants... you know, all the normal stuff that people worry about when they run for 26.2 miles all in a freaking row.

So I figured the least I could do was go out and cheer for her.

And the lovely Amy of Writing While Running was out there with me.

Cowbell Master

The half marathon and marathon runners were so awesome and so inspiring. It was really a treat to be out there cheering everyone on. We saw Running Bun and NYCRunningMama, and I know that Gianna from Run, Lift, Repeat was running the full but I didn't see her.

All runners: You are amazing! 

It was so, so fun just getting people to laugh a little while they were out there working so hard. We had a sign that said "WHO NEEDS NIPPLES?"--which inspired a lot of men to show us the bandaids they plastered on their nipples. And when I yelled out that Amy had been cowbelling for hours, some runners clapped for her! Uhm, you guys are the ones running your butts off!

Seriously. Runners are the best people in the world.

So I got a chance to see my special runner--Meghan--twice on the course. I saw her first at the 11.5ish mile and again at 24.5. At both spots, I jumped in and ran with her a little bit.  Well, at 24.5 I ran for a full mile. It was so great to check in with her and see how she felt. And the fact that she felt really good made me all that more happy and excited.

I managed to take a video of her so that she can look back on this day and have proof that she was running really strong.

For the record, she did not shit her pants. She beat all her goals to a pulp (her A goal was to finish sub-3:30) and she ran negative splits. So inspiring!. She makes me feel so excited for running my own first marathon in October.

Congratulations, Meghan!!!

And congratulations to all the runners. Super amazing day.