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| Defender of the GenderOn a chance encounter yesterday, I happened to 'run' into my old cross-country/track coaches, and after chatting with them for a while, they invited to come and run with my old high school team for the rest of the summer. Now, I am not in the best shape of my life at the moment. Though I am trying to get back into some resembling running form for interhall cross-country this year (right now my fitness more closely resembles an asthmatic geriatric man trying to flee from a nurse wanting to give him a bath - wheezing, dying, and smelly!), I am still not quite where I need to be, and there is one girl on the Kearney Catholic cross-country team that is really quite fast. I mean, she puts all of the guys on the team to shame (though, I'll admit, they have a really young team and some of these guys will come around pretty soon). Needless to say, I was slightly worried about being shown up by a girl who is four years younger than me. Luckily, my recent training for a community 5k run/walk going on this weekend had me in just enough shape to hold my own with her this evening. For such a feat, the guys on the team thanked me heartily for "regaining the dignity of the guys cross-country team"; I was quite humbled and I think that Erika enjoyed having someone to push her at practice for a change as well, so everyone came out ahead (which usually doesn't happen in running, if you know what I mean). Today's Run: 2 sets of 6 x 200m (with a 200m jog for recovery between each rep) | | |
| Home is where......you sit around all day and to absolutely nothing! Isn't it great? Well, that's not quite true. I haven't been a completely worthless and unproductive lout since coming back home to Kearney, but it is nice to relax a little before heading back to school for one last year. Among the activities that have kept me from going into a self-induced coma from lack of stimulation have been reading, running, and relearning. Reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This book, by a cognitive scientist name Hofstadter from the University of Indiana, is about his idea of how consciousness can arise from a network/pattern of inanimate cells in the human mind. He posits that self-awareness arises in systems that reference themselves and draws analogies from math (Godel), art (Escher), and music (Bach). So far, it has been a very interesting read. Not bad, considering that the book was a prize that I won for the "Best Talk" award at the physcis REU this summer. Running to get in shape for a road race next Saturday. Well, the 5k this Saturday is all part of a larger plan. I am actually starting my training for interhall XC this fall (hopefully I'll actually be in shape for it finally), which I hope to use as a spring-board for the Holy Half Marathon in the spring at ND. And then, if all does well, using that as another jumping-off point to train for a full marathon this next fall. Though with my history with running, nothing is ever overly certain. Relearning everything I ever learned about physics. It's all in the name of the Physics GRE - oh that bane of graduate school bound physics majors everywhere. As I gain more and more knowledge about physics as my studies continue, looking back, the only realization that amazes me more than all I have learned all that I have managed to forget! Today's Run: 9 miles at a nice steady pace Today's Physics Review: Motion in 2 and 3 Dimensions | | |
| The Beat Goes OnSummer keeps on rolling, and not too much has changed, though things
will be starting to wind down here in the near future. Still working
on the physics project and swing dancing at William & Mary, at
least for the next week or so. After starting my final paper for my
project today, it's starting to sink in that the summer will soon be
coming to an end. On one had, it will be nice to finally be back at ND
after a semester in Rome and a summer in Virginia, but at the same
time, once again I have been somewhere new just long enough to make
some good friends and now it's time to leave again.
Yesterday was actually a pretty exciting day. First of all, I spent
most of the afternoon hanging out with Amy on her day off from
enlightening her little history munchkins. Paddle-boating, some good
Italian food, and guitar playing were all in it. Then swing dancing
made the day even better, as usual (enhanced by the fact that Eric was
the guest-DJ for the evening). Finally, I sat down and finished
the last Harry Potter book: The Deathly Hollows. For the benefit of
those who have not had the pleasure of reading it as of yet, I will
refrain from discussing the plot, but I will say that it was as lot of
fun to reach such a marvelously told and fantastic story. I think next
on the reading list is Crime and Punishment which I have been looking forward to reading for quite some time as I have hear very good things.
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| He's Back...For those of you playing the home game, you may have noticed that my attendance record on this blog has been, shall we say, less than commendable. That aside, it looks like I am back to give it another shot. How long will it last? Just this post? Weeks? Months? Only time will tell.
Anyway, at the moment, life finds me in the charming town of Williamsburg, Virginia doing a summer physics research project at the College of William & Mary. My project in computational non-linear dynamics has been less than challenging, but still interesting enough to make it worth while. At this same time, this has left me with plenty of time for my new hobby: swing dancing! Not only does the Swing Club here at William & Mary (which is still meeting, if in a reduced format, over the summer) offer an amazing time dancing every Wednesday and on the weekends, but it has also introduced me to an amazing group of people that I have come to call my friends this summer. In this laid back atmosphere, I have also had some time to try and make some changes about the way that I live my life, and at the moment, I have to say that the results have been on the positive side, leaving me feeling better about myself and letting me be the person that I really want to be.
But enough of the sappy stuff. In other news, I bought a banjo the other which should arrive on Monday or Tuesday. I cannot wait to get it set up and start playing around with it! Also, going back to the Swing Club, we went to Richmond Saturday evening for an amazing dance with swing dancers from all over the area from and then to the late night blues dance afterwards. This put me crawling into bed around 4:30 only to drag myself back out at 9 to get cleaned up and headed off to Mass. Luckily, I went with two of the swing dancers, Mike and Amy, and Amy's parents. Now for those of you who do not these people, it was lucky because they are all amazing! Mike and Amy have gorgeous singing voices, so belting out the hymns with them (sometimes in 3-part harmony) at St. Joan of Arc was a blast, and then the Green's treated us to lunch at a fun colonial-style restaurant where the only thing better than the food was the company.
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| I was chatting with a friend the other evening. We were discussing the difference between 'liking' somone and 'loving' someone (neither in the romantic sense). Now, I absolutely believe that we should love everyone we meet, and maybe even some (or all) of the people who we have not meet. However, when put to the question, I had to agree that I can think of no good reason why anyone should be required to get along with someone else (i.e. to like them). I was trying to think of a concise way of saying what I thought about all of this, and here's what I came up with:
Love the person in front of you right now. You don't have to like them until later, if ever.
However, in the mean time, treat them like you love them. You just might be surprised at how quickly the day comes wherein you enjoy their company!
Just something to think about.
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