Paris, marathon, bed

Sorry that I’ve been out of touch for so long.  As you may or may not remember, I headed down to Paris the day after my birthday.  I went to stay with my friend from college, David, and his fiancee Virginia, to soak up springtime in Paris and to eat my weight in pastries.  Oh, yeah - and to run the Paris marathon on Sunday the 5th. 

Paris was lovely, and it was particularly nice to get to explore from a non-touristy area.  David and Virginia live in the 19th arrondissement, which is not far from the base of Montmartre, but still doesn’t have much by way of tourists in it.  I got to wander down the Canal St. Martin; I wasn’t even aware that Paris had a canal!  I didn’t take many photos, but I did do a number of drawings, in an attempt to de-rust my abilities.  I’m pretty pleased with a couple of them.  I’ll post pictures of them (along with my other pictures) on my Flickr account in the next few days.  I also went out to Laon, the town where I spent my first year in France, and had a nice little wander around there.  I had forgotten just how much I liked it.  :-)

The marathon started at 8:45 a.m. on Sunday.  It passed many of the major sights of Paris - the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Place de la Bastille, the Bois de Boulogne, the Seine, the Eiffel Tower - but I have to admit that, other than the starting sight of the Arc de Triomphe, most of them were lost on me.  Too tired/focused.  I crossed the finish line 6 hours and 1 minute after I started; given that I didn’t train at all, I am quite content with my time.  Angus, whose first marathon it was, and who did train, finished in an amazing 4 hours and 30 minutes - I am so proud of him! 

After the marathon, we were both tired and a bit stiff - my back, in particular, was fairly stiff.  Still, we had a good evening meal and went to bed.  The real fun started the next morning, when it transpired that my stiff back had turned into something else altogether.  I could not get myself out of bed, or even into a sitting position, and when Angus tried to help me do so, I actually fainted from the pain.  Not fun, particularly when we were supposed to be on an 11 a.m. train back to England.  We ended up having to change our tickets, an expensive exercise, and I spent the whole of Monday and most of Tuesday in bed, trying to find a comfortable position (of which there wasn’t really any).  I have been hopped up on OTC muscle relaxants, ibuprofen and paracetemol for a few days - in fact, as I write this (from Gloucester) my back is twinging again, so I think I’ll keep this short and go search out another of the magic pills. 

Tuesday was leaps and bounds better than Monday, and yesterday was leaps and bounds better again.  I was in good enough shape to be able to sit - just - on the necessary trains to carry me from Paris to Gloucester, and even to be able to hobble home from the train station.  Today I am taking it easy, lying on the couch downstairs with a hot water bottle (whoever invented those things should be knighted, or possibly sainted) and watching movies.  Angus has been an angel, giving me back massages and helping me to try and stretch my back some, waiting on me hand and foot, and just in general reaffirming what I already knew - that he is the most wonderful man in the world.  :-)

Just to reassure everyone, I am fine.  Honestly, I feel almost annoyed that such a “little” thing as, probably, a strained back muscle and a pulled tendon (there are two distinct epicentres to the pain in my back) could be so horribly debilitating.  If I’m going to do something as melodramatic as fainting from pain, some stupid part of me wants it to have been from something a little more substantial than “just” a pulled muscle.  NOT that I’m not glad it wasn’t worse, though! 

Basically, I brought it on myself.  At about mile 5 of the marathon, my back started aching.  It had been stiff that morning anyway - as it had been every morning that I was in Paris - because the futon on which I was sleeping was not the best for my back.  But if I kept myself upright, the ache was manageable, and I wasn’t going to let something stupid like a little backache stop me from finishing my third marathon!  What did my back take me for - a sissy?  Then, in about the last eight miles or so, I was babying my left leg, which was threatening to throw a hissy fit and cramp up.  It was stupid of me - limping, even slightly, always means that something else in the body tenses up to make up for it.  Anyway, to my mind, it was really a combination of those two things and my own bloody-minded determination to finish the damn marathon that laid me so very low on Monday.

BUT… I finished my third marathon!  ::grin::  And now I’m safely back in Gloucester, and, although I don’t intend to do another marathon for a few years, I am considering doing another one early in my next decade of life.  Grad school first, but then… well, I’ve now finished one marathon for each decade that I’ve been alive so far.  Why not another one each succeeding decade?  I WILL train for the next one, though.  Even if it doesn’t improve my time greatly, it certainly improves my recovery period!  :-)

Nice!

I only just read this article on Grist about the new billed that Congress has just passed.  Very nice!

Organic v. good for the earth

An interesting article about some of the pitfalls of blind belief in organic agriculture.  If you find this interesting and want to dive into a book, I would highly recommend The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.

To do before the end of August

1.) Read 41 books so that I have finished everything sitting on my shelves at the moment and don’t have to a.) ship any to the US or b.) feel guilty that I didn’t read them.
2.) NOT go into ANY shop that might potentially contain books for sale or to borrow.

How to strike a balance?

As I cycled home from work today, I mused over Paul’s blog entry about vegetarianism.  (Almost 10 miles of road to cover at my rate of speed leaves plenty of time for musing.)  I accept that meat-eating is not necessarily a good option - it’s hugely inefficient (in terms of calorific input required for every calorie of output), often inhumane, and rather enormously polluting (methane, anyone?).  However, in my comment to the entry, I made reference to two difficulties that I have with or can foresee about vegetarianism.

1.) Health.  To me, humans are meant to be omnivores; we evolved that way and it is difficult to ensure that one’s body gets all the nutrients it needs on a vegetarian diet.
2.) Food miles and seasonality.  I didn’t mention this directly in my comment, but it stands to reason that, if it is environmentally unfriendly for me to travel by air halfway around the world, then it is equally unfriendly for a tomato to do so.  Similarly unfriendly production might include hothouse tomatoes in January in, say, Wisconsin, or wherever.  Local, seasonal food has recently become something of a passion for me, and in my comment I posited that locally- and ethically-produced meat was about the only way to mitigate some of the ills of meat-eating. 

I still think that’s the case - if I’m going to eat meat (or dairy), then as much as possible I should consume local, humane products.  The real question that I have is this:

Is it possible to satisfy all three of these requirement - vegetarianism, healthy eating, and local, seasonal food - at once? 

For instance, some big staples of the vegetarian diet are legumes - beanspeaselentilspeanuts.  Thanks to the proliferation of the soya industry - feeding all those cows has had a good side effect, in this case - it is probably possible to get edamame produced in my home country.  But I honestly have no idea if I could get American peanuts.  And in any case, is food shipped thousands of miles - within the US - really “local”?  And my emphasis on seasonal food puts paid to having most fruits in many places in the middle of winter.  (That last isn’t strictly a problem related to vegetarianism, but I’m guessing everyone can agree that even potatoes can get a little old after several weeks of consuming only potatoes.)

I don’t really have any solution to any of this, obviously, and I would welcome anyone’s thoughts on the subject.

Well, that’s that, then.

I’ve just received my financial offer from Bard, which amounts to slightly under half of what Tufts offered me (in terms of grants/scholarships/fellowships).  While this leaves me with little bargaining power for Tufts, it also does clarify things even further.

Tufts, here I come!

A couple of things

1.) I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea.  It was well-written (by a PDX-based writer, huzzah!) and inspiring.  I know that all of you have already probably heard about the book so much that you’re sick of it, but if that’s not the case (or even if it is), well, you should read it.  It’s nice to have verified, once in a while, that one person really can make a difference, if he or she works hard enough.

2.) As we were driving back from Phantomfest yesterday, we started into a curve where, on the wide verge, we could see a lady, leash in hand, in the standard “pet owner waiting for said pet to finish its business” pose.  The leash suggested quite a large dog was on the other end.  But lo, as we continued around the curve, it turned out that a Shetland pony was on the other end of the leash, calmly chomping away at the lush green grass and weeds on the verge!  That really tickled me.

Well, it’s been quite a week.

On the one hand, I found out that I got into Bard, I found out that Tufts gave me a humongous grant, and I had my last day of work at Clarks.  On the other hand, my grandmother died and I’ve just found out that my mom has been laid off.

So, yeah.

Blimey.

So, I just found out that I have been accepted to the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, as well as Tufts.  The admission to Bard is conditional, based on me completing a chemistry course prior to entry, which makes sense as it’s an M.S. degree and all the science I’ve had since high school was two semesters of Physics for Poets at Reed.  I’m not worried about doing the course, if need be, but I now find myself with something more of a choice than I had expected.  It is all highly dependent on financial aid, of course, but still.

M.A. or M.S.?  Boston or Annandale-on-Hudson?  Tufts or Bard? 

Any thoughts, anyone?

Neoliberalism?

Interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times.

Notes and letters and family

Last weekend, the weekend of the 28th, I was down in Texas for my grandfather’s 80th birthday party.  I was a surprise guest, and had the gratification of seeing Pop actually surprised to see me.  We had a wonderful weekend - there was a core group of family visiting that included my mom, aunt, and uncle (siblings), and all four of the grandchildren (me, my brother, and my uncle’s two kids), plus my other aunt and my grandfather’s partner.  In addition, however, over the course of the weekend, all sorts of people came to visit: great-uncles and -aunts, second cousins, old family friends… It was great!  There was a big dinner Friday night, on Saturday the core group trooped out to Graham, Texas, which was founded by my… what was it?... fourth- or fifth-great-grandfather, then another big dinner Saturday night, and general putzing around on Sunday. 

I got back early Tuesday morning, went to work at Clarks that afternoon, and turned in my one-week notice on Wednesday (although I agreed to work through this week, to be helpful).  I’m going to go work for Vision 21 full-time; or, at least, for four days per week, which is close enough to full-time for me give up Clarks.

On Saturday, I had a rehearsal in the afternoon, and then the Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra played a concert in the evening.  The concert consisted of Sibelius’ Karelia Suite, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and my favorite piece of music in the whole wide world, Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2.  The concert went swimmingly, and the friends who had come to hear it enjoyed it, although I don’t think they’re going to keep the symphony as a favorite piece, given that all they could hear, apparently, were angry bees when they listened!  ::grin::

Yesterday, A and I had a lovely day.  He went out for yet another 18-mile training run (good on him), putting my later-in-the-day five-miler to shame.  Marathon in a month, you say?  Can’t be…  Anyway, after that, we just had a quiet afternoon reading, then made a gorgeous caramelized onion tart for dinner and played Scrabble.  Really nice.  :-)

So, looking ahead: last week at Clarks, then starting at Vision 21 full-time next week.  This coming weekend, A and I are going with some friends to an evening of ghost-hunting at a local castle; even if we don’t find anything paranormal, it will still be fun to sleep overnight in a castle and have an evening with our friends.  On the 22nd, we’re having A’s mom and her partner up for a Mother’s Day meal, probably involving the gorgeous “chicken with forty cloves of garlic” recipe that we’ve tried once before.  I’m having a bowling party for my birthday on the 27th, because A and I are going out for a nice meal together on the 28th, and on the 29th I head down to Paris.  I’ll spend the week with D & V, who live down there, and might go out to visit my old haunts in Laon, train fares being affordable.  Otherwise, I’m just going to enjoy spending a week speaking French and eating pastries and bread and good cheese, and will enjoy having yet another birthday celebration, this time a joint one with D, whose birthday is on the 26th!  Then there’s the Paris Marathon to run on the 5th, which A will beat me by hours and hours at, and then back up to Gloucester for a while. 

And so things wander onwards…

::bighumongousgrin::

“Dear Ms. Haskin:

Congratulations!  It gives me great pleasure to recommend to Dean Lynne Pepall that you be admitted to the Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for study toward a Master of Arts degree in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.”

WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! 

::humming::

It is a gorgeously sunny day, 13 degrees Celsius, I have daffodils in the window and new watercolor pencils on the desk… Life is good.

Shameless, yet somewhat tentative, plug

K, a fellow San Antonian, my freshman-year roommate at Reed, and, currently, a fellow expat (though on the opposite side of the world) and I are starting up a photo project, complete with its own website.  I have no idea if this is going to work, but we’re going to give it our best shot.  (Ha ha!  Get the pun?  Truthfully, it was unintentional, but I’m keeping it now.)  If you are interested, take a look at Hello, Squared.

February 3rd update

Well, that’s done.  Yesterday, I turned in my application to Bard College for its M.S. in Environmental Policy.  Combined with my application to Tufts, completed and returned in mid-January, that is my grad school application process finished.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, because I did rather shoot myself in the foot by falling into my school-day habits of procrastination.  That said, however, I’m fairly proud of the personal statement that I wrote for Tufts, and at least comfortable with my much-different personal statement for Bard.  We shall see.  As far as I know, I won’t hear back from either of them for a couple of months, so I’m trying not to think about it.

One side benefit to all of this is that my U.S. taxes are finished, a full five months before I would normally do them (living abroad does have its perks).  Since I had to submit my FAFSA with my Bard application, and since it’s easier to do the FAFSA when one’s taxes are completed, I did those on Sunday.  Now that the FAFSA’s in, I just have to send my 1040 off to London.  That’s a relief!

The new job at Vision 21 is slowly gathering steam.  I’ve had to put it somewhat on the back burner while finishing up the grad school applications, but this morning it started again in force.  I met up with the director of one of the programs for whom I am writing a big grant proposal, and we went through it in depth, bringing me up to speed.  I also had the opportunity to discuss another, smaller grant proposal (for the installation of micro-generation technologies at our office) with the relevant Board member, and am going to steam ahead with that proposal.  Now we get to see whether my persuasive writing skills really stand the test!

Looking ahead, there is some travelling to be done.  Nothing like last year’s Africa trip (still need to write that up…), but still taking in one new-to-me country.  At the end of March and beginning of April, A and I will be heading down to Paris to run (in his case) or stagger (in mine) the Paris Marathon; I’ll head down a few days in advance to visit friends and revisit former haunts.  Then, at the end of June, he and I are being included in a get-together for his mom’s partner’s family, which will take place in Switzerland.  If you want to see the place we’ll be staying, check out this link.  Pretty, no?

And then, all going well, I’ll be heading off to grad school late in the summer, possibly heading over earlier to attend D and V’s wedding in Vermont!  If I don’t get into grad school, though, I will continue at Vision 21, hopefully on a more full-time basis, and just reapply to Tufts and Bard next year.