Run, Calgary, Run!
So remember that really horrible day that I ran my 60K for the virtual Calgary Ultra Marathon?
Turns out I could have picked a worse day to do it: the day of the actual marathon.
My day was windy as hell, but was otherwise not too bad.
Today, the day of the actual marathon, was also windy as hell but came with a bonus hour and a half of POURING RAIN.
I don’t mind running in rain. But when the downpour hit, it was around 8:30 in the morning. Based on when the ultra started this morning, I estimated that I’d be about halfway through the race by that time. Which would mean another 18-ish miles of either getting rained on or running in soaking wet clothes/shoes/socks.
So yeah.
I’m okay with my virtual decision now. I was really regretting it for a few weeks there, but at least now I am blister free and not lying on the ground at the finish line in pre-hypothermia mode like I’d be if I ran today.
FUN!
Fun Thought:
I haven’t bled through a pair of shoes in a while.
TIME TO CHANGE THAT!
Around mile 10 of my marathon today, I realized that the front of my right foot felt kind of wet, as if I’d stepped in a tiny puddle.
Turns out…
I didn’t want to stop to take my shoe off and it wasn’t hurting yet, so I continued onward. It actually didn’t hurt too badly until I got back home and took my shoe and sock off.
Observe:
Could be worse. I thought my toenail just sheered off or something. Instead, I had a hole in the toe of my sock and the exposed part of the toe had the top layers of skin rubbed off. It bled a lot more than it deserved to for that small of an injury.
Bandage has been applied; walking and running must resume!
(Thrilling blog post, I know.)
Have Some Class!
What up, NERDS?
I just bought the Kindle version of The Caine Mutiny because I haven’t re-read that book in like a year and I neeeeeeed.
But that’s not the point of today’s blog.
The point of today’s blog is to remind all of you people who started college the same time that I did (2006) that it’s almost been EIGHTEEN YEARS since we began our post-secondary (and beyond!) journeys.
Long time, huh?
Now consider your college experience. Was there a class (or two or three) that really changed your perspective on life? Or changed your academic career?
OR BOTH?????
[I’m really hyper today, sorry]
For me, it’s the following three classes:
1. Tests and Measurements
This was basically the class that 1) got me interested in statistics, 2) showed me that my interest (developing tests for latent constructs like intelligence, personality, and other things like that) actually had a name: psychometrics, and 3) made me fast-track the hell out of my undergrad experience. I ADORED this class. It was easily one of my most interesting, engaging, and life-changing classes I’ve ever taken…and I’ve taken a lot of classes.
2. Literature of Western Civilization II
This is the class that got me interested in philosophy. I don’t think I would have touched that subject with a ten-foot pole had I not taken this class. Reading selections from Descartes, Hume, Camus, and Sartre, among others, and putting those readings into a historical and cultural context really made philosophy sound like an interesting subject to me. I took my first philosophy class the semester after I finished this class.
3. History of Modern Philosophy
One word: Leibniz.
What about y’all?
I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be SCREECHING WITH RAGE
This is still one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.
That is all.
How do I fix the sad?
I am in the rut to end all ruts right now. I feel utterly useless and that everything I try to do is just going to be outdone by someone else or just completely ignored.
So let’s try to end said rut by making a list of feasible end-of-summer goals, huh?
I think I did something like this last year and it helped me get things done. The nice thing about this year is I’m FINALLY not going to have to spend my summer prepping for a new course (like ASHA, which took a lot of prep) or constructing, finalizing, and polishing my tenure application. So what should I do?
- Complete the registered marathons/ultras I am currently signed up for. This one should be easy if I don’t, like, lose a leg or something.
- Print the remaining blogs. I have Year 1 – Year 12 printed. I want to get the rest of them in physical form just in case something bad happens to all the digital versions.
- Do another story edit (and more?). I haven’t touched my story in several months because I’ve been busy with other nonsense…which maybe is a good thing; now I can do another edit with fresher eyes.
- Clean/organize my office. It’s better than it was this time last year, but I hate that it’s not as organized as it should be.
- Do art. Drawing, painting, whatev. I FINALLY will have some time to do it, so let’s take advantage of it, shall we?
- Get more serious about improving my French listening skills. Reading? Fine. Writing? Okay. Listening? It’s horrible. I need to do better before my next class in the fall.
I’ll add more stuff later if I think of it.
Can’t Figure Out the Door? It Might Not Be Your Fault!
Haha.
So today I found out about the term Norman door, which refers to any door that is confusing to use. Or, in a broader context, it refers to any item/product that has a design element that does not make it clear how that item/product should be used.
It is named after Don Norman, who states in his book The Design of Everyday Things that:
“The design of the door should indicate how to work it without any need for signs, certainly without any need for trial and error.”
A vid:
The doors in the math building fall under the term “Norman doors.” Some of them have “push” or “pull” on them, but half of them don’t and it is definitely not clear what you should do with those. I still screw it up sometimes, haha.
I feel like I knew there was a name for this kind of thing, but didn’t know the name itself. Interesting!
Also:
(Not really a Norman door with that handle, but this is what came to mind when I was reading about this, haha.)
Coming to Canada? WANT TASTIES??
Four of them are in Calgary. I don’t know where Eight, D.O.P., and Major Tom are, but the River Café is on Prince’s Island Park. I use their year-round public bathroom sometimes, haha.
As for the Vancouver ones, I feel like I’ve heard of Published on Main (and probably walked by it if it’s actually on Main St.), but I’ve never heard of the other ones.
It’s too bad I’m so picky about food, otherwise I’d probably enjoy exploring those four Calgary restaurants.
One Snarky Mountain
Today is the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.
I wasn’t born yet, but I of course have seen videos of it. My dad has (had?) a little thingy that showed the different coarseness/fineness of the ash at like 10, 20, 50, etc. miles away from the eruption.
I actually think I captioned a video about the eruption back when I was working at Pima Community College (which was like a lifetime ago now, haha).
Anyway, I happened upon the Twitter account for the mountain, and whoever is running it has a great snarky sense of humor.
Nothing beats the Big Ben Twitter account, though:
ARRRRRT, MATEY!
We’re back to this old nonsense again.
Can you see why I want to try more watercolor? At least all my watercolor arts probably wouldn’t be just another iteration of the same damn shape and theme.
I am sad.
Very, very, very sad.
That is all.
I want to WATERCOLOR
I suck at it, but I want to get better. I also feel like I can do stuff with watercolor that’s quite different from my colored pencil nonsense.
Some painting ideas:
- More flowers
- Trees
- The aurora we just saw the other night
- The Bow (the building, not the river)
- The Bow (the river, not the building)
- Jazzy?
We’ll see.
Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!
Vrooma-Vroom-Vroom
I didn’t mention this when it happened because of SHAME, but a few weekends ago I went running early in the morning and, around mile 7 or so, started feeling some twinging at the back of my ankle. It wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t constant, but it was a sharp enough pain that it actually made me stop running and call Nate to come pick me up because I didn’t want to risk it becoming an actual injury.
(Ultimate humiliation, by the way. I still feel embarrassed. I’ve never not finished a run before.)
It didn’t hurt when I walked or anything, but I gave it a few days before I ran again. While there was still a little pain on the first run, it wasn’t too bad. It slowly got better and I limited my runs to my shorter distance (17 miles) instead of doing any long runs.
Today, though, I tried my first long run since the twinging and was able to do a marathon with no twinging/pain/whatever.
So that’s cool.
Hopefully it was just a little bit of tendonitis? I feel like I’d experienced that pain before, but not since I really first started running. I’m 98% sure I have some shin splints* going on in the opposite leg, so maybe I’ve been running weird to compensate for that pain. Also, I think I was wearing my old pair of shoes a bit too loose. Also also, I did that 60K several weeks ago and was running in less than ideal conditions for about half of it, so maybe that angered the tendon or muscle or whatever the hell was twinging. I’m not actually sure.
Hopefully it’s all better now and I can get back to my regularly scheduled running programming and possibly do a better 60K before the Calgary Marathon virtual cutoff so that I don’t have to count that pathetic 10:30 minute pace one.
*It’s either that or, like, a hairline fracture. Not sure which and too scared to find out.
Let’s Play “WHAT’S IN CLAUDIA’S BACKPACK?”
I have two ratty old folders I keep in my backpack for…various reasons. However, over the past several years, they’ve both accumulated all sorts of nonsense papers and things that I probably don’t actually need to carry around with me on my walks.
So let’s see what we’ve got in these things, huh?
(Yes, this is the thrilling blog content you’ve all been wanting me to update/upload daily, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW)
Folder #1!
- The outline/timeline for my NaNoWriMo 2020
- Notes for my presentation on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem for ASHA
- The “this is all the procedural stuff for the tenure application” packet
- A piece of tracing paper?
- A mask
- The receipt for my compy from last year
Folder #2
- An old STAT 213 final exam formula sheet
- Some blank graph paper
- Another mask
- Some of the info for applying for an out of the country voting ballot for the last presidential election
- Some notes/sketches for a REALLY DUMB comic strip idea I had a while back
And I’m carrying all of this around because…?
Absolutely riveting.
Why didn’t anyone tell me…
…about this ABSOLUTE BANGER?
This has been around for seven years. Clearly I have been slacking when it comes to searching for music.
Also, this is literally the only good thing that’s come out of Trump’s involvement in politics.
Ugh.
The smoke is back.
Already.
It’s FREAKING MAY.
It also always seems to happen on the hottest day of the week/month/whatev, so we can’t even open the windows.
I hate summer already.
At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country?
(Sorry)
What the sun is doing to the earth right now:
(Screenshot of – what else? – a SolarBalls video)
Anyway. I was afraid we wouldn’t get a cool aurora show here because 1) it was kind of cloudy, 2) it seemed like everyone else in the world was already posting pictures of their light shows and we were still in complete darkness, and 3) that would just be my luck.
However, Nate picked the perfect time for us to go outside and we caught the lights just as they started to appear.
I took 100 pictures, but here are my favorite five:
This was my first time seeing the northern lights. WOO!
A Migraine Prodrome?
While on my run this morning, I started feeling really, really weird. I sometimes get this super strong “déjà vu”* sensation, and that was happening so severely this morning that I actually had to stop running for a second and just try to let my brain chill out before I could continue. I also just felt off all morning, and the combination of these things made me think that I was going to end up getting a migraine sometime soon.
And so guess what happened this afternoon?
Fortunately I was done with the ASHA adjudication meeting that I had to go to in the morning, but unfortunately I was about two blocks out from my office and on the way to FreshCo. Another fortunate thing though was that I noticed the vision stuff right as it started, which means I took some Excedrin immediately. The faster I take the meds as the vision stuff begins, the better it seems to do in terms of making the actual headache part more bearable.
So that was fun.
At least it didn’t happen while I was running.
*It’s not déjà vu, but that’s the closest thing I can think of to describe it. It’s almost like what I would describe a smell to be like in terms of how it permeates my sinuses and head, but it’s obviously not that, either.
TumbleUpon
So I was showing Nate how Tumblr works tonight and realized that I hadn’t really posted anything of substance on there for quite some time. Tumblr used to be my main jam, too, especially from like 2012-2015 or so.
I went back through my posts and holy hell, there’s so much:
- Sun/space stuff (but mostly sun)
- Metalocalypse stuff
- Clouds
- Leibniz
- Really dumb math/stats jokes
- Achievement Hunter
*Fallout 3 narrator voice* Claudia. Claudia never changes.
Also, the one post I ever made that got any likes/reblogs.
Edit: I FORGOT ABOUT THIS HAHAHAHA
I did an ART!
This is like my first ever legitimate attempt at doing anything with watercolors. It looks more like a drawing than a watercolor painting because I layered like a millimeter of paint on there, haha. It took me three hours because I had no idea what I was doing.
What do y’all think?
This is old news now, I guess, but…
Achievement Hunter, the group of hilarious let’s play nerds who basically kept me virtual company throughout my math degree at the U of I, is disbanding/shutting down.
I originally discovered them through Tumblr; or, more specifically, I discovered Michael Jones/Rage Quit through this video while working at Pima (I watched a lot of videos via Tumblr on that job, haha):
I didn’t know what Rooster Teeth or Achievement Hunter were for a while after that, but after watching enough Rage Quit vids on YouTube, another one of their Let’s Plays with more than just Michael in it got recommended to me. I think this was the first video I saw with Geoff, Ray, and Gavin:
Then I was hooked. I got my mom hooked on them too, haha.
Anyway in honor of the tons of laughs I got from them over the years, here are some of my favorite videos of theirs:
And all the Rage Quits I listed here.
Huh…
I just finished another pair of shoes (500+ miles), which meant that in addition to starting the new pair, I saved and exported the old pair’s mileage from my iPod so that I could start the count anew with the fresh pair.
As mentioned somewhere previously on this blog, I’m not actively going for a new mileage record this year (which has been incredibly demotivating), mainly because I’m pretty sure my entire family would want to throw me in the river if I were to obsess over mileage even an iota more than I did last year.
So when I checked my mileage progress for this year so far as I entered the new miles in my little spreadsheet, imagine my surprise when I found this:
- Cumulative miles from January 1 to May 2 in 2023 (my record year so far): 2040.27
- Cumulative miles from January 1 to May 2 in 2024: 2125.24
UM.
But then I realized that 1) I had not yet bumped up my daily mileage to 18 miles in 2023 by this point in the year, and 2) I had not yet run a marathon distance in 2023 by this point in the year, whereas I’ve done multiple marathons, multiple 50 Ks, and a 60 K so far this year.
Still, though, I was not expecting the mileage to be that close and for 2024 to be (even a little bit) higher.
I’m going to have to try really hard not to use this as a sign from the universe to go for a new mileage record.
Really, really, really hard.
Also, I’ve taken over 101 million (recorded) steps since I moved to Calgary, which is pretty sweet.
Guess What’s Finally Up to Date?
This blog.
Guess who cares?
No one.
A Plan
Howdy, y’all!
(I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on here before, but if I have, I’m sorry.)
Back in 4th grade, I wrote a really horrible (quality horrible, not topic horrible) story in a spiral notebook. It was the longest thing I’d written by that point, and back in like 8th grade I transcribed it into a different notebook because 1) the original one was in pencil and was starting to fade and 2) my handwriting in 4th grade was terrible. I still have the 8th grade copy:
(It’s starting to fall apart now too, haha)
I was thinking of typing it up at some point, so my new plan is to type it up chapter by chapter and maybe put each chapter up here as I get them ready, sort of like a little serialization thing. It’ll be like Charles Dickens, except, you know, terrible.
That will also force me to get the damn thing typed up, at least.
Eigenblogger 