Running: Where I'm at now

I usually have one or two obsessions going on at once, and for now it seems to be running.  So here is what I'm doing.

You'll note my last post before my blogging hiatus was about my first 5k.  I started running using the Couch to 5k plan in the spring of 2010, with the goal (which seemed ambitious enough at the time) of completing the Geneseo Trio, three 5ks in our new hometown, that fall.  I did them all, with my fastest time, 38:05, in the third.  Anyone who runs knows this is not really that fast; I didn't run every step of the way, and I kind of bonked in the second of the three, which was on SUNY Geneseo's hilly campus on an unseasonably hot evening and only had one water stop (which itself is not unusual for a 5k, but it wasn't enough for that day and course).  But I got a neat pint glass, filled it with beer, and felt good about myself.

I didn't keep up with running that winter - it was cold and there was always a bit of snow on the ground - and then I got pregnant and had a baby, so I went about a year without running at all.  Justin encouraged me to start running again in SLC.  We lived in a hilly part of a city which is right up against some big fat mountains.  I contrived a route whose hard uphills were on the warmup and cooldowns and managed to cover about three miles a day, a couple times a week if I was diligent, without making myself go uphill.  I did a couple of not very serious 5ks - one we walked as a family, one I (mostly) ran but on a course that ended up being short - and contemplated doing one of the various longer races down various canyons leading into SLC, but never got around to it.

And then we moved again, to DC.

I'm not sure what it is that made me decide at this point to get more serious.  I asked Justin for a jogging stroller for Valentine's Day (BOB Revolution SE, love it) and started running a couple of days a week after I dropped Auletta off at school.  For a few months I again contrived routes that were either downhill for a couple miles and then an uphill walk back (I figured as long as I was covering four or five miles I was entitled to run only two) or three miles down to Dupont Circle and the metro back home.

While visiting Justin's parents in Ithaca over spring break, I left the kids a couple of times and ran by myself, just slow, exploratory jaunts to, through, and back from Sapsucker Woods.  I didn't go fast, but I realized I could go for an hour/4+ miles more or less without stopping, which I hadn't really done before.  It wasn't particularly hilly, but I wasn't avoiding hills, either.

In May, I ran the Susan G. Komen 5k in DC, because why not, and 1. ran the whole thing 2. setting a PR of 34:57.  Under 35 minutes!  It was the first essentially flat race I'd done, but I started feeling like I could run longer distances without taking absolutely forever.

In June, I ran the PurpleStride (pancreatic cancer) 5k and, thanks to a crowd of 4,000 vs. 15,000 runners and possibly improved fitness over the course of a few weeks, finished in 32:39.

A week later, Auletta finished school and we headed to Ithaca again.  I did a couple more runs by myself and got up before dawn one day to run 6+ flat miles at Cass Park, which is the farthest I've ever run; I did a two-mile loop three times and left a bottle of water and a couple of granola bars by the car for brief stops.  (Note to self:  granola bar really wasn't necessary until at least mile 4.)  The next week, at Justin's family's house on Kerr Lake, I did 4.5 mile out-and-backs at the crack of dawn to avoid the sun and humidity as much as possible (which it isn't, really) and had the small but distinct pleasure of running across state lines, which might come in handy someday, who knows.

Since then I've gotten up at to run 6 AM or earlier a few days a week so I can leave the kids home with Justin before they wake up, and before the weather gets oppressive.  I'm not avoiding hills anymore - they're hard to avoid in northwest DC, anyway.  I am running up hills.  I'm running the whole way.  And I'm doing it for three, four, five miles at a time.  I'm getting faster, not blazingly fast, but enough that I figure with a flat course and cooler weather I can probably pull a sub-30 5k sooner or later.  I'm losing weight - which started happening as soon as we moved to DC, since I rarely drive anywhere except the grocery store these days, and which in turn is probably helping me run faster and longer.  And while running still kicks my butt, I feel great the rest of the day.

I registered for two races this fall, the Navy 5-Miler and the Run for the Parks 10k.  And I'm planning to do a half-marathon in the spring.  I was looking over the comments on my blog from a few years ago and saw that I'd said when I first started running that walking 13 miles seemed easier to me than running three.  Now three miles is a short run.  This running stuff, it works.

Tentatively back to blogging

I've tried to write a couple of comeback posts over the past almost-three years, and failed, I suppose because I felt like I had to sum up everything that's happened since then and, well, I can't. I'll try in a list in two bullet points.

• I had a baby on November 25, 2011. His name is Lincoln. He is awesome. 
• We moved, from Geneseo to Ithaca for a few months (lining Justin's family's already near-full nest with more kids), then to Salt Lake City (love it, miss it), then to Washington DC (love it, still trying to decide if it's forever love or just a short-term thing we might or might not regret later). 

I'm back because, while we have friends here, they're mostly in the unencumbered single/married but childless phase, and I need to feel more grounded here and meet people I have something in common with. So what better way than to sit in a room by myself and write a blog post in solitude like the introvert I am? And my old friends might want to see what I'm doing here with the kind of detail and relentless self-absorption that don't fit in Facebook status updates.

So, more to come, maybe.

Proof

I ran a 5k last week. Finished in 38:29, which means I am slow, but I finished and I had fun. (Picture credit: North Street Studios.)

The mosque thing

Yeah, I disappear for two months and then come back and write a political post, which is always a mistake. Oh well. This is half to share good links and half to expound my typically wishy-washy opinion.

First, links. They're better than what I have to say anyway. First, an article by the boss of a sort of second-degree friend on why the mosque actually helps us, national security-wise. The National Security Mosque.

Also: a comment from a National Review Online writer (dissenting from the majority view on NRO) that blocking the mosque would violate all kinds of conservative principles. A Very Long Post on Cordoba House (but read it all).

Salient paragraph from the latter: "Part of supporting limited government is understanding that sometimes, things you don’t like will happen, and the government (especially the federal government) won’t do anything about it. Getting to do what you want comes at the price of other people getting to do what they want—including build mosques where you’d prefer they didn’t." This is basically where I come down. The First Amendment means nothing if it doesn't mean that acts of speech and religious worship that offend or disturb someone aren't protected. You have a constitutional right to freedom of expression; you don't have a constitutional right not to be offended. As a Christian, and especially in my younger days when I participated in a high school Bible study that the school district decided to kick off campus for a year because they thought they had the legal right and/or obligation to do so, and as a descendant of all kinds of religious minorities who weren't always welcomed with open arms but found religious freedom in spite of nativist impulses (I mean Jews and Catholics, and also I'm descended from Quakers who got the heck out of England for similar reasons), I value my religious freedom. It would be hypocritical of me to deny it to anyone else.

This doesn't mean I'm totally comfortable with the idea of a Muslim religious center in that location (I am not proud to say this, but it makes me a bit uneasy), or that other people who live in New York or were more personally affected by 9/11 than I was don't have the right to voice their own grievances - their feelings may not be entirely rational, but they don't have to be rational to be legitimate. I often feel the strain between my desire to accept Muslims fully - and I've taught classes or sections of classes about Islam and had Muslim students and colleagues; I'm in a position that tolerance is important and necessary - and my anger at the violence Muslim extremists have committed. I also acknowledge that if the purpose of Cordoba House is to build bridges, it's a purpose that's clearly not being fulfilled. This is not really fair, since they can't determine how other people will receive them, but there's no way to begin public relations other than with the public's perception of you.

That aside, though, I'm becoming rather appalled at where public perception stands. I was not a big Bush fan and on the whole he probably did more harm than good in terms of winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide, but he did set the tone right after 9/11 of distinguishing a radical fringe of Muslim extremists from the vast majority of American Muslims who are good people and live in harmony with people of other faiths. We've regressed in the last nine years to the point that few people feel even the need to make that distinction, whether in sincerity or as a politically correct veneer (which perhaps it always was for many people). I don't know where this is leading, but probably nowhere good.

Last day of spring

These were taken yesterday. Summer begins today. Here in Connecticut it's felt like summer for about a month. Seattle, I'm told, is still having what is typical winter weather. So never mind where the earth's axis is leaning.











These were taken with my new (to me, but used) digital SLR which I just got to replace the one whose fussy autofocus has annoyed me for the past four years. We have a trip coming up and I figured this was as good a time as any to upgrade. More on that soon.

Graduation

This is about three weeks late. And I never got all the pictures up on Smugmug, due to technical issues, but most of them are there. They're all on Facebook, and most of my blog readers are on Facebook now, so I have been really lazy about posting them, but then I remembered Justin's mom might not even have seen them and there is something wrong with that. So here's one. More here. I am mostly over the relief since we're moving on to the next half dozen stressful things we have to deal with (including now we have to pay off the loans or at least go through the hoops to get Yale to do it for a while), but YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY.

Antics

First of all, for those of you who have not seen my new Facebook profile picture: LAW PROM. Very exciting for a girl who didn't go to her senior prom.



We got a babysitter and a hotel room for the night. Apparently the hotel room was the subject of much gossip. To which: 1. Is it what you're thinking? OF COURSE it's what you're thinking. Duh. Like that stops when you have kids. (I was wondering if people really believe this when I discovered how stroller-unfriendly the nearest Victoria's Secret is. I'm pushing a toddler in a stroller; what need would I have to see the lingerie? I've mostly given up on VS for other reasons, to be summed up in two letters and two numbers: 34DD. Contrary to what you'd expect, not a very suitable establishment for the well endowed. Anyway.) 2. Think about it: do we really want to come home from a dance with an OPEN BAR at 2 AM and drive home the babysitter? No, we do not. Thus, we got a hotel room. And it was worth every penny. Justin also got me a corsage, a red rose, chocolate, took off my coat and opened the doors at all the right times, etc. Way better than that senior prom I didn't go to.

* * *

Auletta has been hiding garlic and shallots under her pillow. "Why?" I asked. "Because," she replied. Vampires? I don't know.

* * *

I have begun running, or alternating walking with very slow jogging, according to this plan. I always thought I hated running. I don't know that I like running exactly, but I now draw a distinction between a. running and b. seventh-grade gym teachers taking their class outside one day and telling them to run a mile and then giving bad grades to the wheezy dorks who couldn't do it.

* * *

Annoying things my child has been saying:

"OH! MY! GOD! OH! MY! GOD! OH! MY! GOD! OH! MY! GOD! OH! MY! GOD! OH! MY! GOD!"

That things are "stupid."

"But MOMMY!" in an extremely whiny voice.

First two: do not say things you do not want to say your kids to say. It is true. The last one? Since I have not ever whined "But MOMMY!" in my child's hearing, she figured that one out for herself.

* * *

Graduation: May 24. 34 days. I know my friend Anne has been counting down the days her husband graduates from law school since he began. I can now count the days until Justin graduates without the use of complex calculations, astrolabes, etc. Also, we are beginning to receive gentle notes from student lenders reminding us that we will have to repay them. Yale actually has a loan repayment program for graduates earning below a certain amount, which will apply to us. The income threshold is the same for married couples, so this gives me incentive not to work, or not too much. Isn't that odd? I thought Yale would be more progressive about this, or maybe they're encouraging the husbands of their female graduates to stay at home with the kids. Yes, I'm sure that's it.

Spring

The cherry trees in Wooster Square bloomed this week - Tuesday, to be exact.





I suspect they'll be well past their prime by the time the Cherry Blossom Festival rolls around next weekend, so I went out yesterday to take pictures with Auletta. It was in the mid 70s. My fingers are crossed this warmth wave won't be the last we'll see of summer till July, like last year.

Auletta will be two and a half on Saturday, so pretend I'm still taking pictures on significant baby birthdays the way I used to.









More pictures here.

Gay marriage in DC

Legal today. Chief Justice Roberts denied a petition for a stay to prevent the law from going into effect. As someone on Volokh commented, "This is just another extremist right wing ruling from the most extreme of right wing...Oh, wait a minute..."


I am feeling S-M-R-T from my law knowledge by osmosis (fifty thousand dollars a year, I might as well learn something too) that I know what it means for Roberts to act as circuit justice for DC, which seems to be confusing some people on twitter (HE'S NOT A CIRCUIT JUDGE YOU IDIOT! well duh). Isn't the judicial system neat? I am looking forward to our little inside angle next year.

Christmas 2009

Some pictures, finally.

Auletta: not really getting the milk-for-Santa routine.



Signing a note for Santa.



Success! The haul:



Somehow we can never get a family Christmas picture where Auletta doesn't look extremely annoyed to be related to us, but here's the best we could do:



Auletta at Swedish Breakfast (see here for further info about the things we eat, or try to avoid eating--what's funny about this is I didn't know that despite the fact neither Justin nor I has found an almond since we got married, I was pregnant with Auletta when I wrote this post):



Whitney looks very dubious about the God Jul pudding, which he shouldn't be, because he found the almond in about two seconds flat.



More here.

2010 eve

I already know that 2010 will be the year of A Lot of Stuff Happening, so I don't really know what else to say about that. My resolutions mainly have to do with food, and the cooking and eating of it. And so it goes. I am eagerly anticipating the coming year, not just because of the changes I know are coming, but because 365 days from now we will have a better idea of what will be coming in 2011. And now that I think of it, at the beginning of the year three years ago I had no idea I'd be a mother by the end of it, so this year could be filled with surprises too. Good ones, I hope. Happy new year to all of you and may it be filled with good surprises.

Sigh.

From xkcd.

I'm very busy these days, not saying anything online. Look at me not saying anything! (By the way, if you're reading this, it's probably not about you, unless you followed me over here from the one blog where I did kind of say something but not really.)

UPDATE: Fell off the wagon. Oh well.

A B C B E B B, next time what you ARE!

Or something like that. Was I worried earlier this year about how little Auletta was talking? Well, I'm over that.

When Auletta's pediatrician asked at her two-year checkup how many words she knew (vs. like three at 18 months), I said, "More than I can count." Which is about right. And every day she surprises one of us with a new word she knows. Yesterday, we were at the library and she came across a toy elephant and said "Ellphant!" Did not know she knew that.

She counts to ten, sometimes, although for a while she did not recognize the existence of five.

She knows the names of everyone in Justin's family. Thanksgiving was the first time she could name everyone. On every trip to Ithaca for the previous few months she'd pick up one or two names, not necessarily in proportion to how much she adores the person in question--e.g. she learned Soren before Harry, even though she is mad about Harry. But even in Seattle she would just spontaneously be riding along in the car and start chanting HARRY HARRY HARRY HARRY. Despite her love for Harry, she is less exclusive now and no longer spurns her Granny or Papa most of her aunts and uncles. And on my side she loves everyone as well, especially Katie and Gompa. Yes, she continued the family tradition of calling her grandfather Gompa, except on my side rather than Justin's. She also calls his Gompa Gompa. Fortunately the two sides of the family rarely meet, so there's little opportunity for confusion. What is more confusing is when she calls random men over fifty Papa or Gompa, but we're working on that.

And I finally let her watch TV, with predictable results. First BARNEY (ugh) then ELMO then CAILLOU CAILLOU CAILLOU, then PUZZY (Sponge Bob, who is on a puzzle she has), then SIMSIMS, from our DVD collection, and we're hoping she doesn't discover FAMILY GUY or SOUTH PARK. She still simultaneously loves Caillou, Puzzy, and Simsims. Oh, and VeggieTales (TALES).

Blogroll,again

I know, I never write, I never call...

Anyhow, I updated my blogroll, which disappeared in the most recent of ever so many template changes. If I fail to entertain you, please do read blogs by my friends. The semester is winding down, so I might become interesting again.

WATCH

Because Rainn Wilson, my fellow Shorecrest alum, told you to. And because it's a catchy song. And because this is all one continuous shot!

NYLA 2009: My first library conference!

This week I spent about a day, or two half-days, at the 2009 New York Library Association conference in Niagara Falls. The theme of the conference was "Libraries: Peace, Love & Freedom," and many of the vendors and NYLA division booths were decked with tie-dye, lava lamps, peace signs, and other hippie paraphernalia. There were also some sessions on intellectual freedom in libraries and other relevant issues, although I only made it to two panels due to time constraints. I must poke gentle fun at the theme, having lived a bit too long in Berkeley, but it was a colorful theme and I got a neat pair and a half of socks!



I volunteered at the iSchool booth when I first arrived, chatting with prospective students and alumni. I also attended two conference sessions. One was a panel of representatives from library schools around the state, talking about what's going on in their programs. Megan Oakleaf, my professor for 605, represented Syracuse and discussed the cooperative projects between students and libraries in IST 613, Library Planning, Marketing, & Assessment, which I'll be taking next semester. I'm glad I went to that, because it got me thinking about what I might do for my project. I also went to a session on Living History Through Social Networking, which discussed the use of social networking tools to teach information literacy. See the wiki here. I learned a lot about Twitter especially that I didn't already know, and now I have a better idea of how to use it both personally and professionally.

The best part of the conference was the SU reception for students, faculty, and alumni on Thursday night. Not just because of the wine! but also because I got to meet alumni and other students. As a distance student, it's easy to feel isolated from other people, so I really enjoyed interacting with people in person, and especially meeting students who began the program this fall on campus and are in roughly the same place that I am. It's also interesting to hear perspectives on how courses are taught in person vs. online.

It also occurred to me that conferences are like the gateway week in the summer (or maybe it's the other way around!) - you can get away from the distractions of daily life for a few days (and I've discovered as I go on how many distractions we distance students have, especially jobs, families, and kids) and dive head first into the exciting world of librarianship. It's really invigorating; as I did after IST 511, I came home full of ideas and enthusiasm for the path I'm headed down. I also discovered that sections of NYLA such as ASLS (academic and special libraries) have their own little conferences, and the ASLS is having theirs in my husband's hometown of Ithaca next June, so I have a lot more of these to look forward to!

I poop on your holiday!

So today is Columbus Day, a.k.a. Columbus Cold Murdered All the Indigenous Peoples Day. The Ithaca paper had a front-page story about how schools are shockingly teaching all about the Dark Side of Columbus, which is not so shocking to me since my progressive schools were teaching me all about the Dark Side of Columbus and Other Europeans 25 years ago.

What did shock me was when I moved to Wooster Square and found out there were still people who considered Columbus Day a holiday, not just a day off but a festive holiday i.e. Italians, i.e. my people, or a quarter of my people. In 1892, before Columbus became un-PC, the Italian immigrants of New Haven erected a statue of Columbus in Wooster Square which stands to this day, and on this very day I can tell you (though I am not there) that it is festooned with all sorts of flowers and banners donated by the continually present Italian community of New Haven. Also the Knights of Columbus is headquartered in New Haven. So Columbus is kind of a big deelio.

Why? Well, because Columbus was, very broadly speaking, the first Italian-American, and while it might be more appropriate for our people to celebrate Mother Cabrini, this was before her canonization or even her death, so...there you go. And there is something to celebrate, after all, about being Italian in America, which is pretty cool, especially for southern Italians (such as my great-grandparents) who, like many immigrants, came here to escape poverty and provide their descendants with opportunities they didn't have in their native land. Italians are one of the American success stories, maintaining their identity, their traditions, and sometimes (to my surprise as I wander around Wooster) their language, while becoming at the same time fully acculturated Americans. Columbus Day is the day when Italian-Americans celebrate being Italian and American--which, not having grown up in a place with a critical mass of Italians, I never realized they had a day for until I moved to Wooster Square.

Which is not to negate the very real historical consequences of Columbus, the murder and often annihilation of entire native cultures by war, massacre, smallpox, and the like, and the herding of remaining peoples onto tiny reservations on land nobody else wanted. Italians have had it pretty good; we don't really need a holiday. But I wonder if this is a zero-sum game, if on this day our collective conscience must so outweigh any other consideration that there is not a sliver of space for us to celebrate what was good in what came after, which considering how good pizza is, you'd think maybe there would be, just a little. So I can pass on to my one-eighth Italian daughter with the Italian surname for a first name and the birthday that will often fall on Columbus Day weekend, or what is left of it after all the significance has been wrung out of it and we're left with guilt and no mail--sorry, that was a long sentence, but so I can pass on to her a little tiny bit of pride in being Italian-American, which whatever our ancestral sins is still a neat thing to be.

Auletta is two!

She turned two on Saturday. And I would totally have pictures, except I stayed in Ithaca and sent Justin home with the computer that has the photo editing software on it. So, no pictures for another week, unless I snag a trial version of Photoshop Elements on my new baby computer, which by the way I love because it is RED and it is MINE and it does not have dozens of vertical LINES running down its dull screen after its three-year warranty has EXPIRED.

Auletta is super duper cute, and very opinionated, and I'll write more about her maybe sometime after I write my next post.

In Which Girl With Flat Hat is Outed, or Where Do I Live Again?

I googled "girl with flat hat" today for the first time in, oh, ever, and wow maybe I should do that more often. I am on the DC Blogs blog feed because I used to live kind of near D.C., I mean a lot closer than I do now, and they feature a few posts every day in DC Blogs Noted. I had no idea, but Guess what our baby has two of? and When two toddlers meet in the night were both featured. I think they go for the catchy titles.

Also Girl With Flat Hat is listed on the NY blogroll of Net Right Nation, Your Unique Portal to the Conservative Blogosphere. So I guess it's true what you already suspected, that my pretensions to (how do you state a negative?) moderate-ness (moderation), unaffiliation, centrism, etc. are lies, all lies! Well, actually I just scanned the blogroll and there is a blog called BOLDLY LIBERAL on there, which is, so maybe it's just really easy to fool them.

Where do I live? Not New York or D.C., at least not at the moment.

In far more important news (TODDLER STAT ALERT!): Auletta had her two-year checkup today. She is 31 3/4" tall, 22 lb. 11 oz., and has a 49 cm head. 10/10/80 on the percentiles. Two flu shots and a clean bill of health. Feel the love.

Ahead: Upstate

So I feel like writing a more reflective post, now that I am past my initial state of shock and crazy happiness. I mean I burst into happy tears when Justin got off the phone with the judge Friday morning. I complain about New Haven, which rivals Berkeley for my least favorite place I've ever lived (for different reasons, mostly), but it is an awesome thing to get into Yale Law School, and an awesome thing to clerk for an appellate judge. Everyone who gets to do these things is qualified, but not everyone who is qualified gets to do them, so it is all a mix of luck and timing and fitting someone's idea of what they want their entering class/group of clerks to look like. So we are really fortunate. I keep saying "we" when of course Justin's doing these things and I am here because he's here, while doing most of the caretaking for Auletta and my own studies, but obviously what he does affects me, and I can't tell you how glad I am that he will be clerking for a federal judge, who is really just all around a great person and a good fit for Justin professionally and personally, and in Geneseo, which is 1. not here and 2. in upstate New York, where as you've probably noticed we spend a lot of time already.

Now, I totally stole this map off the Internetz and modified it so those of you who aren't familiar with upstate NY could get an idea of where we are headed and where it is in relation to the other places we go upstate. I placed green dots over the towns of Ithaca, Geneseo, and Syracuse, and also over the approximate location of New Haven over in Connecticut.



As you can see, Ithaca is in south-central New York, on the southern end of Cayuga Lake, which is one of the Finger Lakes. Syracuse, where I'm doing my MSLIS and where I'm spending some time physically even though it's a distance program, is about an hour northeast of Ithaca. Geneseo's not much farther in a northwestern direction from Ithaca physically, but since there are a bunch of lakes in the way, it takes about two hours to drive there. And a little under two hours from Geneseo to Syracuse. Geneseo is a town of about 9,000 people with a SUNY school, so it's small but it's a college town, which is the kind of place we like (except it's really small, even compared to Ithaca, so maybe we don't know what we're getting into). That's about all I can tell you about it. Also it's about 45 minutes from Rochester, where I have some family and where we'll fly in and out of when we fly places. No more I-95 to get everywhere, thank goodness (the worst part of being here is getting out).

Now, going places. The Second Circuit's seat is in New York City, so the judges hear arguments there for a week each month and the clerks go along. That means I'll be alone with Auletta in Geneseo for a week each month, or we'll hang out in Ithaca, or maybe I can come along...but this all depends on what I'm doing--I might take a class each semester at Syracuse (feasible if it meets once a week), and I will probably do an internship in/near Geneseo at some point. But this, on top of the fact that a Job is much less flexible, schedule-wise, than law school, means daily life will change a lot, so it will take some getting used to.

Also it will be cold, the full import of which I have not yet realized, although winter here hasn't been a picnic either.

But I am so excited! We are really both small-town people, or at least suburb-type people. I loved Charlottesville to pieces, although it was the sort of place that drove some people crazy because it wasn't a very big city and it was a couple hours from the nearest metropolis. I think this next year will be great for us, and I'm just hoping we like wherever we're headed after that as much.