So for the last couple months I’ve been traveling in Europe. I’m realizing that I don’t want to forget everything that I did and I didn’t journal or blog the whole time. I think I’m gonna do some summaries of each of the countries over the last couple days just to actually remember what I did.
I love the ordinary good days. The days where nothing crazy good happens, but I end it sitting in my bed happy, content and ready to sleep.
I took my time waking up this morning. I ate my breakfast in bed. I walked to work and stopped at a coffee shop I’d never been to before and got a delicious iced coffee. Work was stimulating, but I had some down time to read some good blogs. I ate salads for lunch and dinner. The train showed up right in time for the ride home. I went for a short run at a faster pace than I thought I was capable of these days. I discovered kombucha. I went to an engineers without borders meeting and wished my friends luck on their trip in two days. I got home and ate some chocolate and talked to my roommate. Now I’m sitting in my bed blogging for the first time in weeks.
Nothing crazy but I am full of contentment listening to this rain and watching Archer.
How about instead of obsessing over that depressing and inaccurate monologue about being a fat girl from Louie, we listen to awesome shit like this instead.
Its coming back!!
Okay I’m gonna gush over this show for a couple minutes.
I’m just amazed that, even though its 2014, that this show exists and has gained such critical and popular acclaim. Okay not amazed, because at this point so many more shows like this should exist, but like so refreshed at how amazing it is.
Obviously I love this show.
I’m just obsessed with how well it tells the stories of these women. Women of color and trans women and women of every possible sexual orientation, and just the fact that it centers around women in general, with only a couple men on the side is magnificent. God I just can’t explain my love for this.
Man if we keep going with shows along the lines of this and Broad City I will be one happy girl
Image from TinaB3lcherFOX on twitter
So I’m feeling kind of blah today. Its probably just the rain and the lack of work to do and the prospect of still having three and a half days in the work week but all I want to do right now is go home and curl up in my bed and finish my book. Since that’s not an option, clearly, I’m going to do what every self indulgent blogger does to cheer themselves up, I’m gonna make a list of things that make me happy.
- Lying in bed curled up with a book and some tea and some music while its raining (how very tumblr of me)
- Bob’s Burgers
- 30 Rock
- Sitting on the beach in the late afternoon when its cool enough for a sweatshirt and you’re a little damp and a little salty and a little chilly but completely relaxed.
- Freezing cold ocean water
- Outdoor concerts
- Sam’s Summer
- Dancing in the most unsexy, goofy, interpretive dance way possible
- Card’s Against Humanity when the group you’re playing with has the perfect kind of sense of humor
- Terrible jokes (ex. What did the tectonic plate say when he bumped into another tectonic plate? MY FAULT!)
- My new bike
- When you run by someone you know in a race, especially if its right near the finish line
- Barefoot Truth
- Florence and the Machine
- Finding a new song you love and listening to it over and over again
- Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family, no matter how often it happens
- Laughing too hard to talk
Alright enough of this cheese. Time to go hunt down some work to do with the rest of my day.
I think the hardest thing about being an engineering major is the lack of art in my life. Its one of the few things that I miss about high school. By my senior year I was in the ceramics room for two to three periods every day. I took AP art and submitted a 3d art portfolio my senior year. Something about ceramics, both hand building and the pottery wheel, is the most soothing thing in the world to me. I would come into the studio, plug into my headphones for the period, and zone out. There hasn’t been anything else in my life that has made me feel quite like that.
For my birthday, my roommate got me a gift certificate to a pottery studio and I can’t wait to use it and bring a little art back into my life.
I’m going to be running (doing? participating in? so hard to find a verb to encompass all that it entails) a sprint triathlon at the end of May. This is going to be my second ever triathlon.
The first one was a bit of a joke. I did it on a whim at the end of August because my sister had decided to do it and I can’t not do a race that she’s decided to do. I had begun training for a half marathon that I would be running in October so I was in okay shape, but I hadn’t been on a bike or in the pool in months.
I almost backed out at the last minute, but as my dad reminded me I would clearly survive it and even though it would probably be tough, I would regret not going through with it the second I saw my sister cross the finish line and I would be better for finishing this race. As usual, he was right.
So I did it. I borrowed my mom’s bike and her gross old bike shorts and had a hot, damp, sweaty, hilly, uncomfortable race. I almost gave up a couple of times on the bike and I came in pretty close to the end of the field. But I also loved it. There really is no feeling better than going into something unsure if you can do it, and making it through. And because there were only two people in my age group, I took home I pint glass from the awards ceremony.
So needless to say, I came out of that race a little bit addicted and have recently signed up for my next one.
Initially I was thinking I would just train casually for this one too, but my friend, who I’m secretly super competitive with (mostly just in my head) will be running it with me and I realized that I really would like to have at the very least a time that is comparable to hers. So yesterday we put together our training schedules, which start on Sunday and now I’m so ready to get started!
The mileages are super weird. I beginnertriathlete.com’s custom schedule creator and this is what it came up with. I think it gave me minutes and distances based on the paces I gave it, and I think the minutes were less weird than the mileage.