Back again
January 27, 2009
Well, I’ve been busy lately–or, I suppose not really, just busier than I was. I’ve been teaching, it’s three hours at a go most weeknights, and with both the preparation I have to do beforehand and the high energy level I have to maintain while in the classroom, it’s enough to fill my days.
To catch up a bit, Brian and I spent Christmas in Weed, California with his family. Here are a few pic, unfortunately it seems like I never remember to take enough of them…
OK, well Sumi wasn’t really there, but she sure looks cute in the presents, no?
Anyway, to move on to more current news… Lately I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve read Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, and Anna Karenina…all good books, though some more enjoyable for me personally than others. Presently I’m reading Middlemarch, which I’m enjoying immensely. But the most important books I’m reading are of a different kind entirely. They are Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training and Practical Programming for Strength Training, both by Mark Rippetoe. Brian ordered these for me for Christmas, but I just got them last week. And wow, did I ever need these books! Starting Strength is geared towards the novice lifter, which I am not, but it covers the basic movements so thoroughly and well it’s like, well, it’s like what the Joy of Cooking is for all things culinary. The bible, if you will. It’s embarrasing to say, but I have never power cleaned–and now I’m going to learn, because the book tells me how. If I had read Starting Strength four years ago when I started weightlifting, I would be a veritable brute by now, and I probably wouldn’t have lost so much time to injuries either. Sigh.
Practical Programming, though, is what is really going to change my life. I have come to a place in training some of the basic compound movements where I just can’t seem to make progress, and I know exactly why. It’s because I’ve never paid much attention to my programming. I just went to the gym, and worked hard at whatever I felt like doing, and that was enough to make me stronger, because that’s how it works for pretty much everyone at the outset. If you’re weak, any kind of physical work will make you stronger. However, after a while it gets a lot harder to make progress–once you’re strong, getting even stronger requires more than just random effort. It requires planning, and to plan properly you need an understanding of why and how the body gets stronger in the first place. That’s what this book is about. Me, I want a 1.5x bodyweight squat, and this book is gonna tell me how to get it. And believe me you, you all will hear about it when it happens.
Scaredy cat
October 15, 2008
Today I am driving myself to Portland; tomorrow morning I get on a plane back to Massachusetts, again. This time my trip is short, less than a week.
When I was gone for almost a month last time, some good came out of it here at home, in that Brian and Chester finally became friends. It took me months to befriend Chester while he was still living out in the backyard, and though Brian fed him occasionally, Chester really wanted nothing to do with the big loud scary man. When we brought Chester inside we immediately appointed Brian the title of “breakfast man,” hoping that Chester’s opinion of him would improve when he noticed that big and scary though he is, he is also the keeper of the wet food. It was a good idea, but it worked only so well–he’d rub agains Brian’s legs while he was dishing out the food, but the minute Chester had finished wolfing down his breakfast he reverted to scaredy cat. When I was away, though, Chester had to make a decision. You see, he actually really does like people, and is a sucker for pets–so when I wasn’t around, he had to either get pets from the scary man or else go without for a month. Fortunately, he decided Brian isn’t so scary after all…
Moving forward
August 9, 2008
Some good news: Brian got the job that he was waiting to hear about. He’ll start working in the U of O bookstore, in the art supplies department on Monday. (Yay health insurance!) And I got some folks to promise me letters of recommendation, including my creative writing professor from Rice, Max Apple, who teaches at Penn now, and my organic chemistry teacher, Gary Spessard, who is retiring from St. Olaf this year. (He has taught several summer sessions at U of O.) I am basically just asking the professors who I liked the most as teachers and as people. Good enough, no? Okay, back to studying.
Nervous
August 7, 2008
We are rather a bundle of nerves here in our house today. Brian is waiting to hear whether he got a job that he wants, and me, well it’s a week and counting until the MCAT, and I’ve been having to start asking people to write me recommendation letters for my applications. It’s not very comfortable for me, I’m not much of a schmooze. And I’d like a letter or two from my professors at Rice–that’s a pretty strange e-mail to have to write. Hi, I haven’t been in touch in a decade, can you write me a recommendation? However, I just sent one off.
I am eyeball deep in Physics; circuits, at the moment, to be exact. Hey, check out Brian’s rocking farmer’s tan:
Front...
I harass him to wear sunscreen, but he apparently isn’t doing a very good job of it.
...and back.
Big birds
July 27, 2008
Today I took a break from studying and Brian and I went to the Cascades Raptor Center.
There were three bald eagles at the center--but we see these all the time around here...
We’ve meant to visit ever since we moved to Eugene. We saw a talk featuring a dark morph Swainson’s hawk, and a “developmentally delayed” barn own. The birds on display are only the ones that have no chance of being released back into the wild due to serious impairment from injuries. They have 63 birds on view, and who knows how many more being rehabilitated.
You can't really tell from the photo, but these golden eagles were monsterous.
We got to see some birds being fed; the rodent eaters get dead mice or rats, depending on how big the bird is, and the bird hunters get dead chicken chicks. These white tailed kites, below, got two chicks each for lunch.
The two kites had brain damage due to heat stroke when they were fledglings.
The vultures had signs all over their enclosure, like every two feet, that said "I bite hard!" I wonder how many fingers this one has tried to take off...
One of the turkey vultures was pretty endearing, believe it or not. She was very imprinted on people, and was all about trying to get you to interact with her. She obviously had pretty good success in getting people to stick their fingers through the chain link, judging by all the signage.
Brian and the birds.
