Sailor Soldier of Love and Justice

Running today went significantly better. I did some more research and discovered the run-walk-run technique. Basically it's where you run for a short amount of time, then walk for a short amount, then repeat until your race is over. And by short, I mean really short. For beginners, a lot of sites suggested running times of 15-30 seconds. You increase the run times only after stamina has been developed.

I went with the following pattern:
- Run 30 seconds
- Walk 30 seconds
- Run 30 seconds
- Walk 30 seconds
- Run 30 seconds
- Walk 3 minutes

By doing that, I doubled the amount of time I was actually running and halved the amount of pain I felt. We'll see how I feel tomorrow, but I felt pretty good today. Gives me confidence that I might actually keep this up.

And I had enough energy afterwards to do some cleaning too! I finished going through nearly all the boxes that had to return to the sewing room. I have a few more things that need to find homes (books!) but other than that, the room is nearly up and ready again. Then I can finish cleaning the guest room. After that, I have the downstairs bathroom, the kitchen, living and dining rooms, and the stairs. IF I have time after that, the upstairs bathroom could use a cleaning too.

In other news, Maggie discovered a box turtle the other day on one of our walks. She curiously sniffed it until the turtle squished up into its shell. Then that was it for Maggie. She wanted to go back home as far away from the turtle as possible. What a weird dog. Mighty hunter she is not.

In sad news, Nugget died this morning. I cried. :( She had been fighting a tumor for a long long time. The vet had given her maybe a month to live, but she managed to hold on for over a year. The last couple days she wasn't doing well. Mom was feeding her baby food. Then this morning, she went out, did her business, came back in, rested on her pillow, and stopped breathing. I guess she decided it was finally time to go.

She was a good dog that was always grateful that we had rescued her from bad breeders. When we first met her, she was covered in fleas and her fur was totally matted. The first thing she did when we brought her home was poop on my homework. But she settled in easily after that and was always friendly to everyone she met. I think she could remember that bad times and appreciated the chance to live a better life. She lived 16.5 years, which is pretty good for a dog. I'll miss her.

Java midterm went well. I got a 97. Go me!

So far I have straight As in this class. I hope I can keep it up.

A bunch of people dropped the class after the midterm. The class started with 28 people officially on the roster (Although only 10-12 ever showed up) and now it's down to 7. I can remember ever having a class that small at Tulane. Crazy!

I am looking forward to learning more stuff soon because I have been unable to find an app that I want. But soon I will have the power to make it myself!!!

Basically, I want a to-do list app with the following features:
- Schedule reoccurring events x-days after completion, rather than on a specific date
- Create rolling chains of events that require the completion of another event before populating
- Collapsible sub-task lists

I feel like these things are not that complicated, but I was shocked that I couldn't find an app that does them. (If you know of one, please tell me.) It seems like all the to-do list apps out there are just glorified notepads. If I wanted that, I'd just use pen and paper.

So I will make what I want and be filled with productive glee.

In other news, the following dog-human interaction took place:
Me - Maggie, your nails are so long! They need to be clipped!
Maggie - *jumps up on couch* *gives me her paw*
Me - You want them clipped right now? Let me get the clippers!
Maggie - *waits patiently on couch*
Me - *gets clippers* *clips nails*
Maggie - *presents paws as appropriate for clipping*

She's SO smart! It's insane! And now she has perfectly trimmed little toes.

Unlike Noname. who has talons of death. Ben has to hold her down while I clip her nails. It's an ordeal....

Today I took a long relaxing bath. Well, mostly relaxing. Every 5-10 minutes, a small corgi would push herself into the bathroom to check up on me.

She'd whimper as if to say, "Are you ok? Why would you do this to yourself!?"

I reassured her that a bath is not as terrible as she considers it, but I don't think she believed me. She was very relieved when my bath was finally over.

Ben has a cold. It makes him snore and gargle all night in his sleep. Earplugs are saving our marriage right now.

He sounds absolutely dreadful. I hope it clears up quickly.

It snowed again. Another half an inch. I'm not sure I'm even going to bother to shovel it today. 

Maggie loves playing in the snow. Part of me wants a real snowstorm so she can have extra fun. She's never seen more than an inch or so of snow in her entire life! Crazy, right?

On to January, so I don't have to type up an entire month all over again.

Also, forgot to mention one thing in December: the final for my programming class.

It was written by someone other than my teacher. And was not very clear at all. My teacher ended up having to explain the directions for every single question on the test because the wording was so poor. I freaked out a lot during the test. I knew the stuff, but the wording of everything made me make stupid mistakes. In the end though, I passed the class with an A. Go me!

Ok, now January.

After new years, I got a lot of sleeping done. Then a lot of cleaning. And cooking. Sooooo much cooking.

It felt good to put away the christmas decorations. Freedom from the most depressing holiday of the year.

Maggie's eye cleared up right away. She was back to her old nonsense in no time.

In other news, noname seems to have developed a uti and is alternating between dribbling on everything and directly peeing on everything. I called the vet, but they couldn't squeeze her in until monday. So we bought noname a pack of diapers to get by until then. Poor smelly puppy.

And then speaking of diapers, on thursday ben and I drove up to baltimore to drop off food to our friends who just had a baby. (Hence all the cooking.) We brought spinach and mushroom lasagna, roasted veggie and kale soup, chocolate chip ice cream, pumpkin spice rice krispy treats, and chocolate chip zucchini bread. It was a mighty bounty of foodness.

I'm not really into babies so I mostly just found the creature to be moist and loud. Maybe it'll be more interesting when it's older and does something other than scream. (So I guess when it's 21?) I mostly just spent the time feeling awkward and trying really hard not to say something stupidly offensive.

Afterwards we stopped at ikea because ben needed a new office chair. We also got a new closet organizer and a shoe rack for me. Which meant a wild and crazy friday night organizing my socks. It may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but I'm actually unbelievably happy about having my socks so organized.

Today was completely destroyed by typing a huge lj post about december. But now that I'm caught up, that won't happen again. Oh who am I kidding....

Walk in the kitchen and maggie is face-deep in noname's bag of dog food. I yell at her to scat, seal the bag, and go about my business. Minutes later, I walk through the kitchen again and she's face deep in the bag AGAIN. So this time I decide to put the bag out of her reach, but when I pick up the bag it immediately slips out of my hand as it was completely covered in puppy drool. About a quarter of the food spills out onto the floor. Got to clean that up while chasing dogs away the entire time. NOT amused.

I'm taking Maggie out on the boat this weekend. She's a smart corgi, so she knows safety is the most important thing!

I need community college classes to start soon because I am bored. And lonely. I need friends and hobbies or something.

Maggie is taking my being home for granted. She expects me to play with her allllll the time. It's pretty annoying. She's cute though. I was gone for a couple hours today (csa pick up day) and when I returned, Maggie was wild and crazy with kisses for me. It was super cute.

And taking the dogs for multiple walks all day is good exercise. For all of us. Noname is totally exhausted by the end of our walk. She's so tired, she can't even jump up the tiny step to get through the front door. Poor baby.

Today we had a scary walk because a stupid neighbor a few houses down did not care that her child was running up to my dogs, shoving small filthy fingers in their faces.I kept telling the kid that my dogs were scared and she needed to leave them alone, but the stupid kid totally ignored me. To make things more stressful, their dog was running around the front yard barking and scaring my dogs. I finally had to yell to the mother, "My dogs are going to bite your kid if she doesn't leave them alone." Even then, the mother only half-heartedly called her kid back. It was scary because I know if my dogs bite, the law was going to side with the kid and stupid parent. My dogs are very sweet, but they do not like things suddenly appearing and being shoved in their faces. Finally I got my dogs away from the kid and was able to continue my walk. On the trip back, I carried them past that house of stupidity.

In happier news, today was a csa pick up day. Check out all the goodies!

Most of the stuff from the csa is picked by the farmers, but the annoying stuff (berries) is left in the fields and you have to get them yourself if you want them.

It took forever to pick the black raspberries. They are pretty much at the end of their season. Barely any good ones left on the vines. It was super windy while I was picking too, so I got all scratched up as the vines were swaying around wildly.

Blueberries were super easy as they are at peak of season. I filled my entire box with the berries from just one bush. And they're super sweet like candy. I picked a handful just to eat as I walked back to the main building. I'm probably going to finish the rest off like popcorn while I watch a movie.

I didn't know what I was doing when I picked the plums (what does a ripe plum look like?), so I had to guess based on how easily the fruit came off the trees. I took only the fruit that came off with a gentle tug. That sounds about right, right?

Then I had the embarrassment of having to google chives because I did not know they grew in bunches around flowers so I did not know I was looking at chives in the herb garden. And I only knew what the mint was because I was able to pinch and smell it. I am filled with shame because I don't know what my foods look like.

Actually, a really good thing about the farm is that they offer tours for schools and camps on where our food comes from. There were a ton of summer camps at the farm today on that tour. A lot of the kids seemed totally blown away with concepts like "eggs come from chickens" and "you can pull food right off of trees." And these weren't all little kids. Some of them looked to be in middle school ore maybe even a little older.

When I had finished picking all my fruit today, I took a small detour to the barn area because their miniature horse recently had a baby. It was very cute. But not as cute as the BABY GOAT. The baby goat almost killed me with adorable. It was so bouncy! And as it nursed, it wagged its little tail a million miles an hour. Then when it was full, it crashed straight to the ground for a nap. Only to wake up shortly after to bounce around again. I think I need to convince ben to buy me a baby goat.

The adult goats were cute too, sticking their heads out through the fence to beg for food. I bought a little bit of goat food and they ate it out of my hand while I pet them. Sooooo cute! Unfortunately many small children saw my army of tame goats and swarmed over me to pet them. I had to say goodbye to the goats for the time being. (Unless ben buys me a goat.)

Now I need to come up with more recipes for summer squash. Considering what a plentiful summer food it is, there are shockingly few recipes out there for it. Grill it, stew it, stuff it, or bake it into a bread. Ben doesn't like summer squash so I need to get creative.

Work continues to be stressful. Will there ever be a week when I don't say that?

This week was more stressful than most because I could not work late to try to catch up on things. With ben out of town, I have to get home at a decent time to save the dogs.

In happy news, they are taking me off the AWF account. That account has been a mess from day 1 and I've never been able to catch up and get things back under control.

Unfortunately the account they are putting me on instead, League of Women Voters, is a very very active account with a lot of work involved. I will never catch up on anything. Ever.

I'm tired all the time.

I hope things get better in the summer. Summertime was usually a bit slower at defenders. I hope it is here too. I need to rest. Going full speed every day is killing me. I don't know ho anyone else there does it.

Other things:
- New dog walker did not kidnap my dogs. Yet. Still worried.
- Ate tiny pies on Thursday. If you are in georgetown, I recommend the tiny pies from Pie Sisters.
- Winter arrived. We have 35mph winds and wind chill in the single digits. Maggie does not understand why I don't want to go outside and play with her.
- Cleaned out the fridge. Horrifying things resided in the back.
- Bought comic books. Small child was totally blown away that you could have a subscription to all your favorite titles held for you at the store.
- Contemplating going to a korean bath house next weekend.
- Seasoning my cast iron pots today. It makes the house horrifically smoky, but it also keeps the house warm.
- I miss ben.

Between my job and my commute, I have n time for anything. :(

Couple things:

Work - Has been super crazy busy. I hardly have time to even catch my breath. And I am still behind all the time. I'm getting tired of this. They clearly don't have enough people for the work load.I am trying to run at 100% capacity every day, but I'm not a robot. I can't keep this up.

Commute - Metro has been a disaster the last couple weeks. First of all, the crazy up and down weather has caused the rails to crack on several lines. Other train systems haven't had a problem, but metro uses rails not designed for this sort of weather. And then, they recent bought a bad batch of breaks, so a part on the breaks keeps cracking and falling off the trains. Add on the usual door issues and sick passengers and you have the commute from hell for weeks on end. For several nights, I've had to take the bus through dc because metro was so horrifically backed up. Best part? Metro announced last week they were going to raise fares.


Home life - Ben is wonderful. No complaints about him. He keeps me sane despite the madness during the workday.

Dogs - Maggie recently started puppy school. She seems to be enjoying it. In the first class we went over "watch me" and "sit." Maggie knew those already though. In the second class, we went over loose leash walking and sitting for strangers. Maggie is having some trouble with the leash walking. She wants to speed ahead all the time. I'm sure she'll get it eventually though. She's smart. Noname on the other hand is a grumpy grump. I wonder if she'll ever chill out. She's cuddled in my lap right now, so she's good for the moment.

Cooking - I have made a few tasting things these last few weeks, but had no time to take pictures. Thismushroom pie was very easy to make, filling, and rather tasty. It also reheated very well. And this vegetarian cassoulet was also easy to make. It was a good, filling stew to have after a long day at work and a long cold commute.The flavors are not very complicated though, so if you like more complexity, it would probably be good to serve it with some herb bread perhaps.