Let's Play Catch Up in the Chicago Marathon

Here's some things we will NOT be talking about in this post:

• My computer science project.
• My computer science lab.
• My computer science quiz.
• That speech I just gave.

It's kind of important to my sanity that I don't relive any of those. Ever. Ever.

It has been a long time since I posted last, so this may be a bit longer than usual. Hopefully I don't bore anyone to death. I can't afford a lawsuit.

My entire Wednesday was spent on my computer science project, and is therefore a taboo subject. There were almost tears and desperate calls. I'm pretty sure that's all anybody needs to know.

I didn't get my Einstein's on Thursday, which was actually super depressing and terrible. I almost starved to death in my calculus class. Thank goodness I hoard my cliff bars in my backpack, just in case of an emergency. Otherwise bad things would have happened. Too bad I can't hoard coffee in my backpack...

Really, Thursday was pretty boring and I don't even remember what I did during it. I'm sure something funny happened that I'd like to remember and talk about, I just can't recall it right now. Or probably ever.

Friday is interesting though. At least, Friday was interesting to me. And by interesting I mean absolutely fantastic and awesome. Obviously.

I had my third meet on Friday, which was a 5k this time and the same course as my first 5k of the season. My race was last, because I was in the open race and everyone else got to go first. The women's varsity race was so fast! Our team had 5 girls at 18:00 or lower! I was pretty much frothing at the mouth while watching this. I shouldn't be left alone while I watch races.

The women's open race was tiny, in case you were wondering. There at most 40 girls, but probably closer to 30. It was cold, overcast, and windy at the starting line. To make things incredibly awkward, my ex-boyfriend's best friend was at the meet, by the line (his girl friend was racing I think) as I stripped down to my buns and tank top. I found it mildly uncomfortable. But mostly I was cold.

As the race starts, I get up to the front with one of my roommates, our neighbor (another freshman on the team) and a girl from State. The first mile was pretty slow, around 5:55, and the second was at 11:58 (which is about a 6:03 mile). This is where I decided to push the race. I don't know when I started losing people, but all I know is when I hit the last k, that there is a girl behind me and she is chasing me. So I run faster. And then one of my coaches is at the last 400, telling me I need to start going faster here. So I run faster. And then I'm at the finishing stretch, and people are screaming at me. So I run faster. And then I'm crossing the line, and the clock is saying 18:13.

To put this into perspective, I would like to point out that my previous PR was an 18:48 that I ran in my junior year of high school.

I think the words to describe me at that moment were deliriously happy.

To make a long story short, I PR'd, won my race, and didn't die. It was good.

After that I got a ride from my dad, not back to my apartment, but all the way back home (after stopping for dinner with the sisters). Why? Because I was going to Chicago that weekend to watch my sisters die run the Chicago Marathon!

In several good coincidences, my friend from high school had an 11 mile long run to do on Saturday (like me) and my team was meeting up before heading out to Portage to race.

In case you were wondering, it's really fun to sit in my coach's office and casually say hi to my old teammates and wait for their reactions. There was a lot of screaming. And hugging. And delayed reactions. My favorite was when I was standing next to my friend who's also in college now (also named Amy), and a girl named Emily was saying how good it was to see her. I'm pretty sure she didn't even see me there, which was why it was so great when she did notice I was there and had a heart attack.

Good times.

They all had to weight lift though, so Amy and I headed out for our run, and got to talk for a really long time. (It was 11 miles after all.) And I got to hear about her life. And her love life. And her love interest. And them swing dancing. And their dates. And how perfect he is.

If she doesn't put a ring on him, I will. Seriously.

So besides the fact that I'm slightly bitter now, it was really great seeing her and all of the girls again! It's so weird not being with them anymore.

Amy and I ended up getting breakfast before I had to leave for Chicago with my parents. I ended up sleeping for the majority of the drive. The hotel we stayed out was really nice, I sort of wish we stayed there for more than one day.

We woke up at 4:30 the next morning (an hour earlier than we had to) and drove to Chicago. I slept during that too.

Chicago at 6:30 am is freezing. As in, I thought the city was being occupied by dementors and that I'd never be warm again. I had a shirt, two sweat shirts, my thickest running tights, gloves, and ear bands on, and I was still freezing.

At least we got to see my sisters before they raced! We didn't get to talk much, but it was still nice. My dad and I then went to the 2 mile to go cheer, while my mom went to a different part of the course to cheer them on while waiting for their friend to meet up with her.

My dad and I got to see them at the 3 mile also, before they looped out into the city where we couldn't watch. So we went to Starbucks, and drank coffee while we warmed up. I feel no shame for this.

The next time we got to see them at the half way point, and they were doing really well at that point! Eileen was at around 1:38 and Meagan was around 1:42 I think, so they were moving!

We got to see them once more before the finish at the 16.5 point, but I only found Eileen though my parents found others that I didn't see. After this all we could do was go to the finish and cheer them in!

Both of the qualified for Boston! (Eileen was 3:13 and Meagan was 3:25.) Am I allowed to brag about their achievements? Because I really want to.

I don't know how they stomached this after running that far, but we got Chipotle pretty much right after they finished (which was delicious) and pretty much headed home.

Almost everything from this point on is on the list of thing I can not, will not, should not talk and/or think about. So I'll just finish with pictures.

Runners!

Even more runners!

This is a man in a skirt. There is no other significance.

Eileen!

Meagan!

All the clothes that got thrown.

Chicago!

Quesadilla Party

Today wasn't very exciting. But I'll try to make it sound like it was exciting, for anybody who feels the need to read this.

Lab was pretty awesome today. The lab assignment was basically doing two programming warm ups, and then five exercises from this website she had. While my partner and I did the warm ups together, we decided it would be more efficient to split the exercises, in part because he had a test and because I wanted food. I did somewhere between three and four of those exercises by myself! Which is good, because our new project is based off of the knowledge used in this lab, so maybe I can get through this lab with my grade untouched. Maybe.

At least I got my Einstein's breakfast. And by that, I mostly mean that I got coffee. But it also means I got a bagel, so yeah I guess it was breakfast.

Calculus is the last class of my Thursdays, which is always nice. Fun fact: I worked for eight and a half hours on a calculus project yesterday. It was the most productive I've ever been in my entire life. Ever.

So I was actually kind of excited to go to Calculus, because I had read ahead in the book, and I had five problems to turn in for feedback. There I am, sipping at my coffee, when my professor walks in with an entire pot of coffee. And entire pot of coffee he intends to share with the entire class. It was sort of awesome but also really sad because I already had my own coffee that I had paid for. I spent most of the class trying to decide if I should grab a cup anyways.

Once I got home I tried to focus on studying for my anthropology exam, but somehow I started searching coffee on Google. And then I was googling world's strongest coffee. And then I was ordering Death Wish Coffee. There are skull and crossbones on the website, and basically the promise to never need sleep ever again (sleep is for the weak). My thoughts were basically "This sounds like a good life choice. Let me go get my credit card." So I may die from overdosing on caffeine, because this has 200% more caffeine than normal  coffee and apparently makes Starbucks coffee look like sissy coffee, which already makes me sort of jittery and kind of crazy. This may be the best idea I've ever had.

Practice was two sets of eight 400s, but there were only four of us doing them because most of the other freshmen are injured and all the upperclassmen are travelling to a meet soon, so they're not working out. Our first set was on the turf/grass, which was weird because I've never done 400 repeats on anything other than a track. The pace was sort of all over the place at first (the first was like an 82 and the second around 95... oops) but the rest in that set were right at 90 like our coach wanted, so that was good. After that we moved onto the track, and ran something like 87, 87, 86, 85, 85, 81, 81, 76 or something like that. Overall a great workout!

Basically as soon as I got home my sister Eileen called and took both my roommate and I grocery shopping, which I was in desperate need of since I ran out of food around two days ago and have been scraping the few things I did have into meals. (Anything and everything is better than Fresh, usually.) Grocery shopping sort of escalated quickly, and my roommate and I decided to make quesadillas for dinner!

Usually I have just cheese quesadillas, but I really liked these! They had mexican shredded cheese, chicken, orange pepper, and black beans. There was also mexican rice and tortilla chips with salsa. I helped by cleaning the dishes in the sink to make room and dicing the pepper. I can't be trusted with stoves.

Everything hit me all at once right after this. The workout, the food, lack of sleep. This is about the time I started crawling around the floor and reading my anthropology notes out loud in an obnoxious british accent while highlighting (also done on the floor, but this time sort of laying there, flopped over).

I also somehow texted my best friend's roommate and convinced her to have a taco party with me.

I need sleep. And coffee. Mostly coffee.

SMASHING

This is the new background of my computer. I love the internet. It enables me.

Why Are All My Classes So Weird?

Guess who's last class of the day of the day was cancelled? That's right; this kid's.

Really all my classes were sort of weird today. Anthropology was just a review day for the test on Friday, and I managed to stay concentrated on what she was saying, while writing it all down, drinking coffee, and eating breakfast. Also while somebody in the room next to us was de-fleshing an animal. At first, I sort of thought it was somebody's phone on vibrate going off while on something metal, except really old so  it was really rattling all over the place.

Nope, the teacher said it was somebody de-fleshing an animal. She also said that the room was about to smell really bad or really good, depending on what it was. I have no idea how de-fleshing an animal can smell good and I really don't want to, so I'm glad she ended up closing the door because of the distraction.

On another note, I'm pretty sure I'm almost ready for this test. Which is good, since it's in two days and all.

After this class I figured everything would be sort of normal/boring. That's how my computer science class started. Eventually, she decided to show us a practical example of the programming, and she goes online to show an exercise somebody made. Which is about cigar smoking, partying squirrels. Apparently, for a squirrel party to be successful during the week, each squirrel needs to smoke at leas 40 cigars. 70 on weekends. And all I can think about during this is how does a squirrel go about lighting a cigar? Where does a squirrel find that many cigars for that matter?

Of course, I end up doodling a cigar smoking squirrel, and then I add a bowler hat. And then I add an eye patch. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself, this is a pirate-gangster squirrel. That smokes cigars. The longer I stare at it, though, the more it begins to remind me of something. It's squirrel Nick Fury. The longer I stare at it after that, the more it begins to look like squirrel Mad-Eye Moody.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Smoking Squirrel

Think I need psychiatric help of some kind.

Calculus wasn't exactly weird. The first 30 minutes of class was spent working on our test. The only problems with this test was  there were only two problems on them. The first had four or five sub-sections, and the second one had three or four, but still. That's not a lot room for error.

The first question is about limits, which I think I did alright on because I'm pretty sure I understand limits. The second part of the test was about derivatives.

I think I spent about five minutes staring at the test thinking to myself, "What the hell is a derivative." It was sort of terrifying. So I began to panic think. Right when I literally was about to give up, I realized that the derivative of a linear equation is the rate of change. I almost danced. Almost.

I'm still not entirely sure I explained everything clearly, but I'm pretty sure I didn't fail. I can live with that.

Before I go, I'd just like to say I got 100% on my first computer science project. That is all.


...I may or not be screaming and dancing around my house.

School Time Panic

I'd like to say my classes were incredibly boring. For normal people, they probably were normal. I may have been the closest I've ever been to a melt down today. It started in my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class, which is an 8 am so I should be having a melt down solely based on that.

I get to class and wait for class to start, listening to my sister's my iPod while drinking my coffee and I sort of start to get this bad feeling. Like I've forgotten something really important. That was quite possibly one of those things I'm not supposed to forget. Before I can pull out my planner and check, the teacher walks in a starts talking about the midterm we're having this Friday.

This is when my almost-melt down begins.

Oh dear God. I'd forgotten to check the syllabus for the test. Usually it's okay if you sort of mess up on one test in a class, because you'll have more and also have homework to compensate. Not so in this case. This class has exactly three grades: the midterm, the final, and an essay.

Eventually I talk myself out of my mental screaming and begin to write down what the teacher says is going to be on the exam. Here is where I realize I have to read and take notes on six chapters, and read several articles to make sure I don't fail this test.

I start screaming in my head again.

It's a good thing that the teacher's lectures are all about the readings from the book, otherwise it would have been real screaming. And possibly crying, too. So I know the majority of the material, but now I just have to take notes to be thorough. I can handle that.

Class is, for once, let out early so I don't have to speed walk to my next class, like I usually do. They slower walk sucked the heat out of my coffee, though, and that was really depressing. But at least I'm not almost late, like I am every other day of Computer Science.

Now, I just turned in my last project and did a lab. I was happy to have the weekend stress free. I think I would have liked to have this news before the weekend.

I have project number two due next week on Thursday (October 4), and the teacher claims this one's a lot harder than the last projects. Which I already had problems with. When she's going over the project, it doesn't sound too bad. Want to know when it does sound bad? When you're back at your apartment, shot up with caffeine and adrenaline, and can't even begin  to comprehend what you're reading. I'm going to be having a lot of questions next time we have class.

My Calculus class, while completely stressful and panic inducing, was probably one of my best classes of the day. I think I've mentioned it in one of my previous posts, about this portfolio I was waiting to get back. The portfolio that's 60% of my grade and is worth 150 points. And is my only grade. That came back today.

149/150 is 99%. Did you know that? Because I know that. Because that was my grade. I think I may have screamed. I know I slammed my portfolio onto my desk and flipped my arms up. The only point I lost was because of in-class participation. I can handle that.

I spent most of that class period just being happy, and understanding derivatives vaguely. I could also feel my adrenaline from panicking over the portfolio mixing with the caffeine from my coffee.

My last class after that is my Speech class. Usually, I sort of like this class, even though I'm a terrible speaker and all I want to do is curl up and die whenever I talk in front of large groups of people. The teacher's nice, she lets us out early a lot, and is really straight to the point. Unfortunately, I had to give a speech today.

It was a speech about a speech, and my caffeine-adrenaline laced self was not about to slow down for this.

I basically sped my way through the speech, and afterwards, I was sure I had missed the minimum time (1 minute 30 seconds, the maximum time being 2 minutes). But I didn't care too much by that point, because I had finished my speech, and I was basically done with classes. It was only as we were filing to get out of class that I realized that I was allowed to check my time with the timer.

Never have I been so glad to be tall. I basically got up on my tip toes and looked over everybody's shoulders.

It was exactly 1 minute and 30 seconds.

I may or may not have strutted out of the room. And out of the building. And all the way home.

This is all became too much for me. I literally bounced into the house, into the kitchen chair at the kitchen table, and danced to spotify in my chair for an hour. It was more of flailing and swaying frantically.

But that's how I dance all the time so...

I sort of stumbled my way through part of my project for a half an hour, before giving up. I made myself some lunch, and left for practice not that long afterwards.

Today was color day at practice! It's exactly what it sounds like; you dress all in one color and run like that. I was yellow (even my socks matched). My right foot sort of hurt during this, but I'm pretty sure that's because I wore my converse to class today, and the lack of arch just bothered my foot. So I made sure to do a little bit extra barefoot jogging at the end of my run.

I accidentally left my phone back at the apartment, though, so I missed my oldest sister's calls and text that she had my bike. So she had to come drop it off at my apartment. Oops! Oh well, I got to see my sister.

The rest of my night was lots of study tables (3 hours of study tables, to be exact) and anthropology notes.

Fun fact though, I found both my sister's blogs! Originally, the idea was for all of us to make blogs so we could see what each other were doing since we can't talk all the time or we'd kill each other because we're all sort of busy.

Oldest -- runeatnurse.blogspot.com/
Middle -- runningon-coffee.blogspot.com

Well, good night to everybody then! Or should I say good morning?

I'm a Hobbit Today

Thursday mornings include morning practice, so guess who got up before 6 this morning? At least I got breakfast in before I had to leave, or I wouldn't have made it through my 8 am computer science lab.

Lab was interesting, in that I had to print off my project before class started and practice seemed like it was going to end late. I swear I had a small heart attack. The printer in the lab was only a black and white printer though, so my picture printed off gray-scale. I really hope it doesn't affect my grade, because I actually tried hard on that, and my grade is switching between and A and an A- right now.

Final design of my business card project

Please excuse the lamest logo ever. I literally just sort of threw that together, because I didn't fully comprehend making graphics on BlueJ (the program I use), and I also suck at designing logos. Otherwise, I think it turned out sort of alright. Adding a picture and changing the font/font size was part of the challenge portion of the project (I can see why, that was annoyingly difficult for me), and it was worth 20 out of 100 points. It took me about 3 to 4 days to get those to work, and I'm still not sure I did all the requirements for the font portion.

Ah, well. It's over now so all I can do is panic wait for my grade.

After being frustrated for about 45 minutes on the first part of the lab, everything went pretty easy and I was starving. And extremely lacking in the coffee department. Good for me, there's an Einstein Bros Bagels right next to my 10 am (calculus) where I got my second breakfast. There's this touch screen thing there where you're supposed to place your order, but the girl in front of me broke it without me knowing. So I stood at this thing, holding up the line, and jabbing the screen with my finger, sort of looking over my shoulder while going "uhhhhhhhhh...." Eventually, somebody felt bad for me and told me just to go up to the counter to order. I mean, I got my bagel and pumpkin latte (which were both delicious, but coffee will always hold a special place in my heart), but it was still really awkward.

Yummy :)

If I lost half my height, I'm pretty sure I could be a hobbit. I'd be actually really happy to be a hobbit, since they get to eat a lot. I wouldn't mind living in holes, or hills. Both are equally okay living places for me, as long as I get to have about twelve meals a day.

Anyways, I took my second breakfast with me to calculus, where I complained with the people around me about how we don't have our portfolios back yet, when we have a test on Monday. Every couple weeks in calculus, we turn in all the work we've been doing, including our notes, and get graded on our participation. It's worth 150 points per entry and is 60% of our grade. I may or may not have been panicking since I turned it in, a week ago. And we still don't have it.  I don't even really care if he gives me my portfolio, I just want my grade back. Because it's going to be my only grade in calculus and I'm freaking out.

I was all prepared to be super annoyed with my professor, but all of a sudden he starts talking about coffee. And about how he was thinking about bringing in a pot of coffee for the class every morning. And was that a good idea? YES IT IS A GOOD IDEA, PROFESSOR. MOST EXCELLENT IDEA.

So now I'm not even really made about not having my portfolio back. I just can't bring myself to be angry. This man is offering me free coffee, Monday through Friday, at 10 am. He could fail me, and I'm pretty sure I still couldn't be mad.

Speaking of coffee, I had about a fifteen minute conversation about coffee with a guy on the team while waiting in line to order a sandwich at the cafeteria. I couldn't really remember his name, but I still was able to be social! See what coffee does? It brings people together.

Later today at practice, one of the freshman boys (one of the ones doing yoga in my house last night) wore this 6XL tshirt to practice, and ran the entire run in it. At one point, he sort of curled up inside of it. That is how big the shirt was. He looked like a little kid who was sleeping in their parents old tshrit.

(Also at practice my roommates and I got to hear about our neighbor's/teammate's date from the day before. The date was perfect, and the guy was perfect, and now I am slightly bitter about my life haha).

Something that was great today was that, while one of my roommates was cooking her dinner, while not wearing pants, and two guys from the team walk in through our back door. I think we handled it pretty well. It was kind of weird when one of the guys admitted he wasn't wearing pants either, though.

Well, I have a ROHO workout tomorrow, and I may or may not die during it, so I'm going to go eat my second dinner and cry myself to sleep now.

PS Also there's a scooter on my roof now, with all the decomposing bananas. Boys need to stop throwing things I can't reach up there.