Kristin’s Playground

Life continues. Nothing too exciting. I spent the weekend doing some work, making sure everything from my old laptop was backed up, and relaxing a bit, etc. Walked a bit through the park on Sunday with my dog:

Yesterday, I found two more example’s of “Duck’s” graffiti:


I still don’t get it.

And today. Today I went and picked up a cheesecake from Old World Bakery. They make Ann Arbor-style cheesecakes. Awhile ago I won a gift certificate from my favorite radio station, but since the bakery isn’t open all that much, it took me awhile to make it there. It’s quite tasty though. We’ll have to see how well it freezes, because it’s an awfully big cheesecake for Logan and me.

I miss heat. I admit that I am one to easily get cold, but the temperature change from Puerto Rico to here makes me sad. And cold. But that’s okay. I’ve survived winters before.

Now that I’m back, I have more work to do to get my laptop up to date as my primary computer. Unfortunately, my previous version of Photoshop Elements wasn’t made for the intel-based macs, so now I find myself without a real photo program. I’d been debating previously about whether I should get Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture for photo management, and now it’s pretty clear that I should get one or the other. They should be able to handle the every day photo editing I need. I may need to get Elements in the future too, but I might see if I can get away with GIMP or some such. At the moment, I’m playing around with the Aperture trial, and while I like it, I’m a bit concerned about speed issues. Lightroom is supposed to be faster, but Aperture seems more flexible. Anyone have any experience with either?

While waiting for the bus yesterday, I saw this:

Duck? I don’t get it. Do you?

And today you get a photo from the Glee Club. For every home football game, we go out and sing for the tailgaters to raise some money. Today was the game with MSU - big rivalries equal big money. Unfortunately for the home team, the game didn’t go so well. The singing did, though, even if it was a bit cold. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet at a couple points. (And yes, I was wearing gloves.)

A special treat for you today! You get a lovely movie of the day instead of my normal picture. I love my dog. She gets so excited about her toys sometimes, but she hates leaving her square of carpet. I don’t know what she’d do without it.

In other news, we’re definitely keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Omar. He should pass through Puerto Rico before we get there, we just need to hope it doesn’t get rained on too much. No flooding for my weekend destination, please!

Today’s photo. By the way, I’ve learned that the creepy insect from yesterday was a member of the pelecinus polyturator species. A parasitic wasp. Pleasant!

Two days in a row. Aren’t you impressed? I didn’t give you much in the way of actual updates yesterday, so here are a few recent news items.

• First - our paper got accepted! We finished up with the revisions from the commenters last week, and it’s officially going to be published! Hooray! I’m looking forward to having a new line on my CV, and my first paper from grad school.
• Next, and also terribly exciting: We’re going to Puerto Rico this weekend for vacation! We’ve been planning a vacation for fall break for awhile, but hadn’t really decided on where - San Juan, or Mexico City maybe. We were just going to wait for the last minute deals and find one that seemed like a good deal and go! Logan and I bought our tickets last week, and we’re looking forward to an extended weekend in a fancy hotel in Old San Juan. There will be history, architecture, rum, hopefully a rainforest and waterfalls, beaches! I’m really quite excited, can you tell? We leave on Friday.
• Less exciting, but nevertheless important. I finished up seeing a physical therapist for my knee. It’s been doing reasonably well since the race, but that’s probably because I haven’t really exercised at all since then. I really ought to be doing both my knee exercises and I probably ought to ease back into some running or swimming or something.

So there are a couple of tidbits for you. I hope to slowly catch up on some of my 101 things posts, but I’m not promising anything.

I’m restarting my photos of the day. It’s been too long. Today you even get two photos of different creatures I saw on my morning walk with Anya.

There is a giant rock in the nearby park. Today I discovered that it was crawling with box elder bugs, both adults and the immature red ones. I’d never seen the immature ones before.

There was also this creepy bug on that rock. I don’t know what this one is, but it looks quite vicious. Anyone know what it is?

Quick post with some photos for ya.

11 August 2008: I snapped this photo while biking back from Dexter on the AABTS’ “Civilized Ride.” Nice looking night.

12 August 2008: I found this fruit ice treat at whole foods and I had to get it. I’m a sucker for frozen things. What frozen ice do you know that has real coconut milk in it? (2.5 grams of fat in one of those triangles, yet only 50 calories. Coconut milk is tasty….)

13 August 2008: There’s a bird’s nest right above eye level on the way to the bus. I took a photo of it on my way in.

14 August 2008: The end of my two-week coffee-shop hiatus, and a diptych for a project on Utata. Coffee Break!

15 August 2008: On our way to go dancing on Friday! Hooray!

::Waves:: Remember me? Yeah, I’m a bit behind in posting a bunch of things. As is normal. I’ve had a couple of late nights at work as we are trying to get “the perfect data,” but I’ve also had some non-work-related fun in the last week too. Went out dancing with friends on Friday night. Had dinner with my hubby on our 5th anniversary on Saturday. Took most of the week off in terms of biking or running to be nice to my knee; started again this morning with 3 loops of the mile-long course around my house (still no 10 minute mile, but I think I’m closer). Been keeping up with my pushups, but I’m not sure I can claim complete victory today. This was the start of the dreaded Week 3. I’d completed 20 pushups in my exhaustion test on Sunday, and they expected me to do 64 pushups (albeit with breaks) today. Ow. I made it through the first three sets alright, but on the 4th pushup on the set of 10 I couldn’t come back up. I paused and tried again. Made the 4th, but then failed on the 5th. Paused a little longer and I could finish the 10, though I’m sure my form was not up to par. After that, I was supposed to do as many pushups as I could, as long as it was more than 15. I waited longer than the 60 seconds to start them, and still had to stop and start a couple of times. I eventually got to 15, but after the awful-form last pushups I could hardly move my arms. Ow. I’m going to push ahead with the rest of week 3 and we’ll see how it goes, but I imagine I’m going to be repeating this. It’s definitely making me build up some muscle though.

With the running and the late day at work, and the pushups, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed early today. But, before I go, I’ll post some overdue photos-of-the-day, and hopefully I’ll catch up on some of my other posts soon.

6 August 2008: My adorable mp3 player I told you about. The silly putty egg is for a size reference. This thing is tiny.

7 August 2008: There are tires filled with concrete and posts to hold up fencing for a construction area on campus. They’re ridiculously bright orange, and I had to take a photo of one.

8 August 2008: Oh no! It’s bedtime and I haven’t taken a photo yet today! Good thing Anya’s cute.

9 August 2008: All I wanted to do was jump into bed. Fresh sheets, made bed, and a sleepy Kristin who still needed a photo for the day.

10 August 2008: Last Sunday I went kayaking with some friends. Right by the canoe livery there is a shopping cart that has clearly spent a long time underwater and was covered in mussels.

Okay - bedtime now. ‘Night!

Well, it’s been a busy weekend. Way too early on Thursday I flew back to Wisconsin. There were a lot of small planes at the airport for the EAA’s annual air show:

I left so early so that I could see my dad play in the park with Levi Douma. I’ve been meaning to go see him for quite awhile, so I was really quite happy to make it back for that. They sounded great - good music for the park, and there was a respectable crowd there too. Yay, Dad!

That afternoon my mother and I threw together a photo studio in the living room in order to take senior photos for my neighbor. I brought down my umbrella, lightstand and reflector (all quite portable - no checked baggage!) and all of my camera gear. I threw together a quick gel holder for my flash, and when Erin came over, we spent a lot of time shooting - some indoor in our makeshift studio for the yearbook, and the rest outdoor. More on this later.

Friday, my dad took me to go get running shoes. I’m prone to hurting myself - I’ve had plenty of sprained ankles, and the last time I ran, my knee decided I shouldn’t really be doing that. So, if I’m to run, I need a good shoe that will help keep me in a good running position so I don’t strain things that shouldn’t be strained. After running around the parking lot in a number of different shoes and learning more about what a good stride should be, we settled on these:

That night we also went to the opening of a Chinese art exhibit at the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum. There were some incredible pieces there, and a local dance group performed some ancient Chinese dances. What the Chinese were accomplishing a thousand years ago is truly amazing, and that some of it is still preserved today is great.

Saturday we went to a family reunion for my mother’s family. It was nice to see a bunch of family members I’ve only met once or twice - some not at all! Of course, I got to see my grandpa and aunts and uncles, too. My grandpa has done a ton of research into our family tree on that side, so I spent some time poring through his printouts, and everyone brought out old family pictures and scrapbooks. I’m hoping to get copies of some of them. Even the frogs came out to the pond in the backyard:

Sunday, Dad and I went running around the block twice (3 miles!), and I spent some time deeply engaged in photoshop - trying to finish up the pictures for Erin before I left. Had dinner with the ‘rents and in-laws, saw their new waterfall/pond that they’d just finished putting in. Good stuff. Chai played with a pencil:

Monday was another ridiculously early flight, coupled with not much sleep due to a storm passing through. Unfortunately, the storm made its way to Chicago before my plane did. I spent about 5 hours on the plane (on the ground) waiting for clearance to take off. Oof. I eventually made it home, but it was a long day.

Today was a Tuesday. Worked. Did day 1 of the Hundred Pushups Challenge. I did about 4 1/2 pushups during my test a couple days ago, so there is a lot of progress to make. In other news, one of our tomatoes has turned red in my absence! Anyone know what I can do wih one tiny red tomato?

Oof. And now, it’s bedtime.

Wordless Wednesday

That’s my photo of the day. (Day 7 in a row! 1/3 done with item #95!) That also was yesterday’s baking project. It’s a Linzer torte, and wikipedia tells me it’s the oldest cake known to the world. Cool. I didn’t know that. It’s Austrian, and our Austrian co-worker always brings some back for us when he goes home. He’s leaving for a new job tomorrow, so I thought I’d try my hand at making some for his going away party. I was really nervous about how it would turn out, but I think it worked well. The crust is so delicious - hazelnuts, almonds, butter, sugar, flour. The dough was pretty hard to work with though, so the lattice strips are a little messy. Ah well. I’ve never made anything with lattice strips before. I’m not even sure I’ve ever made a pie crust by myself, so I’m happy.

The party was filled with tasty food and I ate way too much, but Kelly, Beth and I went running again tonight, so it sort of evens out, right? We went about 3.5 miles, which is more than 5k, so we’ll be set when the actual event comes. Took 45-50 minutes or so? (Our timer got a little messed up in the middle…) Not so bad. I certainly jogged for longer than I’d expected to be able to. I had some good constant beat-per-minute music from Podrunner, so it helped me keep a steady pace. Also, running with the group helped keep me going too. I felt pretty awful during the last mile or so, and probably wouldn’t have run much more had I been by myself. If we keep up with this, we definitely won’t embarrass ourselves at the Big House Big Heart 5K in September. We may even get Kelly to reach her under 10-minute mile goal. In high school, I’d been training for a 5k and had goal of completing the mile in gym class in under 10 minutes. I think I got 10:04 or something, so I’d be quite pleased to see a 10 minute mile, too.

Anyway, bedtime. But you should pop over to my sister’s blog to wish my brother-in-law good luck on the bar. He finished Day 1 today, but has another whole day of testing tomorrow. Ugh.