I don't like running. The last time I ran voluntarily was 20 years ago on the high school track team. It was fun at the time only because many of my friends were on the team, but I had to quit after my sophomore year because of arthritis in my knees. A few years passed and I swore off running forever after realizing that it's hard and painful and just about the worst way I could think of to get exercise. I was never any good at it anyway (although, with practice, I might have been a decent sprinter -- my coach always admired my high sprint recovery, which means that I naturally lift each foot up quite high when picking it up and moving it forward to take the next step).

Tonight at the gym I realized that I needed to run. It seemed preposterous, but I couldn't think of a good reason not to try so I tentatively increased the speed of the treadmill and waited for sharp knee pain. None came, so I jogged for four minutes, walked for four minutes, jogged for four minutes, etc. I seem to recall reading somewhere that these jogging/walking intervals provide some kind of health benefit. I think I did it six times, which sure beat running for 24 consecutive minutes. The expected knee pain never came -- a phenomenon that can only be explained by the brisk 15-minute walk that served as a warm-up and my recent eliptical-trainering-like-it's-going-out-of-style activity. It didn't hurt today, but when I think back to my track and field days I recall that the first week of practice = serious shin splints, and I fear what my legs will feel like tomorrow.

In hindsight, I think my crazy behavior can be explained by gender politics. No more than 10% of the women who use the treadmills at my gym actually run on them -- the vast majority of users are walkers. Men, on the other hand, seem to run on the treadmills at least 80% of the time. I can't stand it when my team gets shown up like that.

I have a Japanese colleague and a Japanese-American colleague. Between the two of them I'm learning a lot about Japanese culture. Here's my latest lesson, received today in an email from Nobuko:

Happy “Tanabata”!!! July 7th is the Star Festival in Japan.

It celebrates the reunion of two lovers based on a Chinese legend. Altair (Hikoboshi) and Vega (Orihime) were lovers. They soon got married. They were so fond of each other that they spent every minute with one another and forgot their work. God became very angry after he found out the lovers were not working. He decided to separate Altair and Vega by putting a big river between them in the sky. The lovers were heartbroken. Eventually, God allowed them to meet once a year on 7th of July (on a milky way), since that they worked diligently for the rest of the year (oh… boy, it sounds very Japanese!)

It is celebrated by decorating bamboo trees with “origami” and we, Japanese, write their wishes on origami papers and hang them on the branches of bamboo trees. There are more to say, but in short, Japanese found a day, looking at sky and enjoy watching stars every year and make a wish!

What should I wish for? I have about four hours to make a wish, figure out how to fold some origami, and find a bamboo tree.

One year ago today I ran into a tree stump (on a dark night at summer camp) and bruised the bone in my right shin. The doctor who treated me at Urgent Care told me that I would have been better off fracturing the bone, and she wasn't exaggerating. A year later I still have a visible (although faint) bruise and any pressure on that spot causes pain. After several months of numbness I finally started feeling the front of my leg again, but there's still a numb spot right over the bruise. Shaving there feels downright strange.

Summer camp begins again on Monday and I'm not going. I can't be trusted around all of the big, hard natural stuff, so I found someone to go in my place. I warned her to always use a flashlight, because beautiful views of the stars come and go but a periosteal bruise is forever.

It doesn't seem possible for summer to be half over already, yet here we are in week seven of the 14 weeks between the end of Spring semester and the first day of Fall semester. Kids in public schools only get 11 weeks of summer vacation so they won't be "left behind," but my schedule has long been based on the calendar governing grown-up students.

I started the summer with an impossibly long list of things to do, learn, read, watch and accomplish because I still think of summer as a time of limited obligations, even though I have exactly the same amount of free time 12 months a year. Last week I finally accepted that I'm not magically going to gain two extra hours per day, and if I'm going to day anything right I need to eliminate half a dozen other things from my wish list. Being a grown-up, I settled on keeping the two things that are the least fun but probably the most important: reading the entire New Testament in 11 weeks (the summer reading challenge for the kids at church, and I'm unwilling to be the hypocritical leader who tells them to do it but doesn't do it myself; besides, the New Testament is actually pretty interesting reading), and losing weight so I can wear pants again. Pants aren't a big deal right now, but in a couple of months I'll be spending my days in overly-air-conditioned classrooms (about 68 degrees if memory serves) and I'll be longing for jeans. Unfortunately, of the approximately eight pairs of jeans I own I can only presently zip one pair, and they're not terribly comfortable once that zipper gets all the way to the top. I also have one pair of slacks that mostly fits but they're black and very businessy.

I'm way behind schedule on the New Testament -- little progress there -- but after months of inactivity I've become Super Gym-bunny. I finally stopped trying to force myself to be a morning person and started going to the gym at 9:00 every night. Yes, I know that such behavior is supposed to wreak havoc on my sleep schedule, but I can fall into a deep, lovely sleep within an hour of finishing my workout. The gym is nice and quiet at night, and I always see a familiar, emaciated face in Obsessive Anorexic Running Lady. I've never talked to her so I don't know for sure that she's obsessive and anorexic, but she's so thin that medical students could use her as a classroom skeleton and she runs hard for two hours on the treadmill every night without headphones or reading material to entertain her. She has a fierce look on her face the entire time that makes me fear her enough that I've never talked to her, even though I see her every night. I get to consider myself non-obsessive by comparison because I'm only on the treadmill for an hour and I read the New Yorker while I pant and sweat. I also like to think that I have a serene facial expression throughout.

I've lost two pounds so far, which means that I'm nowhere near fitting in my clothes (aside from these skirts that I wear every day, and one pair of cargo shorts) but I've read all but one of my backlog of New Yorkers. Once I finish that one I'll have to look into hands-free methods for holding a book open -- or else switch to an exercise bike.

The photos from our road trip have been online for a week and a half, yet I forgot to post them here. Better late than never. I divided them into five separate albums in an attempt to prevent viewing fatigue:

Driving to Montana

Glacier National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Chico Hot Springs Resort

Arches, Canyonlands and Driving Home

This morning I emailed two of my former professors and asked them to write letters of recommendation for my grad school application. I'll email the third prospective letter-writer once I get his current email address from another former student. It's a little strange to be simultaneously enrolling in classes (I added another one this morning) and applying to the program, but that's what happens when one misses the program application deadline by two weeks and has to be unofficial for the first semester of classes.

It's hard to believe I've been out of school for nine years. My hope that all of the profs will remember me well enough to recommend me led me to compose the subject line "Ghost of grad students past" for the two professors I haven't talked to in almost a decade. As I wrote those emails this morning I was flooded with memories of Grad School, Part I, which was the worst time in my life. My marriage and mental state were so terrible that everything about my life during that time was disastrous except for cherished friendships that I managed not to ruin (or managed to salvage once the dust had settled). I formed close friendships with fellow students during that time, and I've always regretted that I lost contact with the best friend I made in that program. We last communicated in 2002. I've Googled her several times since then but never found a lead on her that would help me find her, and her phone number is lost.

This morning, after two hours of meandering down Memory Lane, I found myself so desperate to locate her that I went through our old emails from 2001-2002 looking for email addresses at which to contact her. The fact that I never thought to do this before should be enough to disqualify me from any graduate program, so I'll keep this information out of my Letter of Intent. Lo and behold, I found an email address she switched to right before we lost contact and it still works -- Dee already sent a brief response. I'm as excited as a little kid at her birthday party (possibly even a party at which I receive a pony from my daddy, but never having experienced that it's hard to be sure).

This Grad School, Part II thing is already paying off, and classes won't even start for two more months. Icing on the cake would be me pulling off my latest plan involving a summer internship and a French museum in 2010.

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to receive a package in the mail from Arbee. Inside was a box with "Fine Jewelry" stamped in gold on the top, and inside that was... fine jewelry made by Arbee! What a lovely surprise! It looks beautiful, and I know just enough about making jewelry to know that her wire-wrapping skill is good. Maybe she can tutor me some day.

Here's my loot, minus the YW Values bracelet and starfish pendant I was wearing.

After two evenings of hand-stitching binding (I'd forgotten how slow that can be) I finished my first quilt. I'm not good at accepting compliments, so people think I'm being modest when I talk about how bad the quilting is. People, the quilting is bad. It was my first attempt at machine quilting and I've had no instruction, so I learned some "don't"s along the way. The quilting got much better toward the end. I can see how I might some day be sort of good at it. The final wash, post-quilting, gave it that lovely, crinkly look quilts get when they're soft and comfortable, so I'm happy enough.

I'll give the quilt to my sister-in-law the next time I see her and it will likely be passed along to a couple of little girls who will have tea parties on it and spill juice on it and wrap it around the family dog (when they get one), so the quality of the quilting is unimportant. I never want to make something so nice that people are afraid to use it every day, so I'll continue to employ my semi-unskilled methods.

Finished quilt in bad light:

Finished quilt in bright sunlight to over-emphasize the lovely crinkliness:

A better section of freehand quilting (stitches mostly uniform in length):

Polka-dot backing fabric ("Posh" by Moda) and binding that almost -- but not quite -- matches the quilt front:

UPS delivered a hammock stand today to hold up the hammock we bought four years ago in Nicaragua. Of course we finally got around to ordering the stand during the hottest week of the year, so we can't actually use it right now, even on the shady patio (it was 108 degrees when we assembled it and tried it out), but in a few weeks when the Monsoon rains begin it's going to be lovely. In September and October it's going to be even lovelier.

Yesterday was a bad day. Here it is, only 9am, and today is already better.

First, MB loved the Weezer Hootenanny and got to play a solo: http://www.azcentral.com/ent/music/articles/2008/06/17/20080617weezershow0617.html

Second, my presentation is over and it went fine. I only got two hours of sleep, but I get to go home soon (I'm just waiting for a coworker to show up -- she's been on vacation since I got back from mine, so we haven't talked in almost four weeks and we need to touch base) and take a nap.

Third, after my nap I can do something fun like work on a quilt or practice bass guitar. I'm not doing any more work today -- my reward for working until 3:15 this morning and then getting up at 5:45 to come to work.

Fourth, I'm taking care of lots of essential school-prep activities like buying cute yet comfortable shoes (check out these beauties -- only $49) and subscribing to the RSS feed for PhD Comics. I'm sure all of that other stuff -- the writing sample that needs to accompany my application to the Art History department; requests for letters of recommendation -- will get done somehow. Can't I write a grant proposal to have someone take care of that?