it is finished

and submitted to the committee with only three days to spare before the start of my field season. i can't believe i haven't been fired from grad school for being so tardy with my proposal!

is it finished well? not really. is it passable? i hope so.

man, grad school is a nightmare. every day i want to quit. i hope it gets better.

right now i'm trying to figure out how to pick up a ton (literally) of soybean meal from the coop, and where on earth i'm going to store it so that it doesn't rot.

the soybean meal is going to (hopefully) attract catfish to my nets (all 96 of them!!).

one little, two little, three little indians

i was preparing for a long and windy ride back to lincoln when i ran into a mom and her toddler sized son in the bathroom at platte river state park. the boy asked his ma 'do indians come here?' and she answered that yes, indians used to come to this place often. i don't know what it was about my spandex and geeky hat that made him think this, but he replied as he gawked at me 'she looks like an indian'!

thanks conrad for suggesting the ride, it was a good one! and thanks for the hat!

p.s. in my post below, behind my kitty's humongous ear, you can just make out the chocolate brown mapei tile grout i used on my bathtub walls!

wild things

i count on finding good vintage at the st. louise thrift on 22nd and o. those old catholic ladies have nice stuff and they take good care of it! a majority of my living room furniture used to belong to st. louise (the rest of it belonged to my great grandmother). i picked up this laundry hamper after brunch at b&c. vashti loves it!

saturday night, after a lazy afternoon at the dog run and dinner at el chaparro (they have the best salsa ever!) cara and i got dressed up and went dancing! and the dj played wild thing!! it was awesome.

chunky monkey

look at the belly on my niece!

sunday morning ride

i took my bike out for its first real ride yesterday morning, headed east on hwy 2. i was very happy to find that nothing was sore after - shoulders, butt...the usual achy places were all good! and i felt fast and strong on my light, new bike. i also felt both attractive and ridiculous at once in my black and pink craft jersey (attractive) and ultra padded shorts (ridiculous).

farewell ballroom dancer

sad, sad news. ballroom dancer is ballroom dancer no more. he has decided to retire from the world of ballroom dance and now he's just jay.

for the longest time i didn't know jay's name and was embarrassed to ask because i should have known it but i must not have been paying attention when we were introduced. when i finally sleuthed his name from another pilates class regular, i was a little disappointed. 'jay' seemed such an unremarkable revelation after all the mystery surrounding ballroom dancer's name. and so i decided that ballroom dancer wasn't jay, but 'j' and came up with an assortment of names that 'j' might stand for, suiting one of his profession. javier, jorge, jacques, jasper, jerard... but all that is over now, and 'j' is just jay. although that doesn't make me think any less of him. (jay, if you ever happen to read this, please don't be offended). i'm just somehow sad that i no longer have a reason to frequently refer to someone as ballroom dancer.

p.s. if you haven't seen this movie, go rent it!

purple balls and bleeding hearts

i haven't had much opportunity to work on a garden this spring, but i did plant some bulbs and a few perrenials last fall, so my yard isn't entirely desolate.

if i go to hell the devil will make me write sas code for eternity

sas is a statistics programming language that i've been learning under fire. i spent the last semester pretending to understand the contents of 'analysis and interpretation of freshwater fisheries data' , a book that is bigger than the webster's dictionary.

this afternoon i finally finished a sas notebook containing all of the code i wrote this semester, indexed and with explanatory notes. i bravely marched up to my advisors office to turn it in for a grade (bravely because i was also about to tell him that i am not finished with my final exam and will be handing it in on monday). i slid my enormous binder across the desk, he opened a notepad, looked at the cover, looked at me, and asked: 'what grade did you get on this?'

'uhhh...a b+', i stammered thinking about everything i left out of it. he slid the binder back across the desk, recorded my grade and that was the end of it.

i don't know how i feel about that. obviously he trusts that i gave myself a fair assessment of my effort, however, this monster deserves a little recognition. he could have at least opened the cover to note my neon index tabs that cost me five dollars!!!

we did it!

at the start of the race - the weather was perfect, about forty degrees, sunny and no wind!


i believe this was taken somewhere early in the 2nd half. my hair is ridiculous.



one thing that makes the lincoln marathon popular - water cups with lids and straws!


my dad is awesome! he offered to run the last 100 meters with me!



i love how i'm trying to pose like a model when i'm about to pass out


cara set her personal record yesterday and i finished my first marathon in 3:45:17!!! my goal for the next one is to shave 5 minutes off my time and qualify for boston!