Costa Rica

honeymoon pix i took in Costa Rica. beautiful, beautiful country. great culture. great eco-tourism.

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase it's usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very properity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." Theodore Roosevelt




"When one
tugs at
a single
thing
in nature,
he finds
it attached to
the rest of the
world."
John Muir

i love you more than technology...but still i love technology...yes...

no, i don't. where is my post? bah! i posted stuff and can't find it. baaaah!

i'm coming out of the closet

hi everyone. i'm back. i wonder if my little blogger friends are still around...why did i forsake you?

anyways, i decided i was getting bored with talking about fitness, so i'm probably going to talk about stuff that is more important to me. yeah, i'd like to be skinny, but apparently I just like chocolate more than skinny-ness.

i also decided i'm getting bored with writing a journal that's all secretive...life is short, dang it. so, this is me!!

this is my husband and me on a bridge at our campus--we got married this july. thanks for the all the support during that time, by the way--I was in a freakin' panic in the months before the wedding...the idea of everyone looking at me and expecting me to be "pretty" when being pretty has never been a big concern for me caused all kinds of anxiety...but, i ended up having the greatest day ever...and, marriage for bruce and i is just what we hoped it would be...the same as before.

and, this is my dog and i on a typical morning. he was a groomsman in our wedding. he rocks our socks off.

i'm going to go delete SOME secret things now that i'm not sure i'd want some people i know to read. :)

thanks for the creepy tan.

I did the ever-so-creepy spray on tan booth thing today...It is SO weird...I've done it before, but every time it is still absolutely strange. I am a lilly white freckley girl who burns like crazy; needless to say, I decided to lay off of traditional tans a few weeks ago...Since I'm in a wedding this weekend, I decided to take a quick five pounds off by doing the good ol' creepy tan.

By the way, I'm still alive. I've been here reading, but not writing. Not sure why I haven't felt like writing, but I just didn't...so, I didn't. :) I wonder if anyone is still here to read.
I literally have nothing else interesting to say. I'm just updating for the sake of updating, although I actually have a billion other things I need to do right now.

shaving my legs above my knees, and other anomalies

Well, this will probably not be very insightful, because I just don't know what to write at all. I just got back from a really short workout. Emphasize the *short*. I forgot quarters for the parking meter, and didn't want to risk getting a ticket, so I shook my ass on this funky elliptical-like machine for ten minutes and then left...but, you know, I'm feeling pretty energized, so I think I might take my BELOVED dog out for a run in a little bit.

I'm pretty excited because I get to start my physical therapy for my knee this week. To answer Megan's question, he said I have (may God help me spell this) chondromalacia--it's the most common knee problem in young women, er, ladies. Basically, there is some muscle imbalance in a particular muscle in my quad area compared to my calves...so, my patella is not sliding up and down but in some jacked up motion that ends up causing pain after running....there are also some disturbing grinding sounds involved as well. Well, they're going to watch me run and check out my shoes and the way I walk and give me all kinds of advice...what shoes/inserts I need to correct the problem, how to land, exercises to correct the imbalance--it's really neat. I'm glad I go to a school where they hire great sports medicine people to keep the athletes healthy, because then I get to go too! The down side: Not only do I have to reveal my blindingly pasty white legs, but I have to shave them regularly now.--even above the knees. I mean, I have to KEEP doing that. Of course I always do that.

yes, I'm among the living

Well, no one will probably think to actually come back and check because all have probably assumed certain death, as I have not written for a millinium. But, I am actually quite alive.

SThe GREAT news is that I went to a sports medicine dr today to discuss my knee problem which has kept my running to a minimum for the last FOUR YEARS....I thought that I would not be running again until I could afford great insurance, but it turns out that my student fees at my university already entitle me to an excellent sports medicine dr and all kinds of physical therapy, and I should be running again in no time!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!! He says that I should only do a mile at a time for awhile and cross train on the elliptical, but that I should get prepared to run the way I used to, because it is right around the corner!! WooHoo! ...People, this is BIG!!

In even bigger news, my dog has become quite stellar at going down the slide at the park, all by himself.

i gained seven pounds in two weeks

Pretty amazing, huh?

While the typical bride may lose weight for her wedding, I, who am secretly really freaked over everyone staring at me and has secret fantasies of our dog as our only guest, have been GAINING. Yep, eating, eating, eating. Overall, I'll do well, but I've had these isolated periods of time in which I plummet off of the bandwagon, flip the bandwagon the bird, order a pizza, eat a box of Zebra cakes and feel like such a loser that I do it again the next day to feel better.... I didn't even realize how generally anxious I had become until I found myself completly useless one day after a weekend of long conversations regarding weddings and parental figures and weddings and weddings and weddings. I found myself completely unable to focus on my school work...I would stare and stare and stare, but to no avail. blah. This won't do. I went to the university doctor, and he said that some brides need zanex, and don't feel bad. (mispelled b/c I don't want those kinds of hits).

One of my New Year's resolutions was to become more politically engaged and active, and I'm happy to say that I'm doing awesome here! I've gotten involved in the local campaign against the proposed amendment regarding gay marriage that they've already passed in several other states...(these are scarey times, when we are writing discrimination into our state constitutions). I've also joined Amnesty International, and have been doing some serious letter writing...I'm trying to be a better consumer activist by staying away from Proctor and Gamble, the animal testing guru's of the world, but I've been sort of lazy there. Yeah. I'm working on a goal!

My dog has taken up this habit of just staring at me while I'm on the computer and making this low growling sound. He wags his tail while he's doing it, so it's totally weird. He's a good guy, but a little high maintenance. On a celebratory note, he learned to go down the slide at the park! Really!