I'm still here, and I gotta say that life is good. I somehow managed to trick a fantastic agency into hiring me (SUCKAHS!!!) so I'm working a lot at a job that I'm absolutely loving! Unfortunately, the job also involves a commute, which I have a love/hate relationship with, depending mostly on whether or not I drag my ass out of bed in time to have a proper amount of coffee before I need to head out the door.

Otherwise, not much going on. Trying to make up for all the cash I spent while I wasn't employed (or was employed but not getting paid) doesn't leave room for much of a social life, but that's cool cause I've been feeling a bit like a homebody lately, anyway.

Been running, rowing, climbing, and surfing pretty sporadically - part laziness, part figuring out a new job/schedule, and part waves not cooperating. But, I have been making it to Bikram class on a pretty regular basis. I'm feeling pretty good. And, if I do say so myself, I'm looking pretty good, too, since I finally got around to changing my hair color yesterday. Trust me, it had been waaaaaay too long.

Have a few super cool things coming up, including a few longer trail races. This will be the first time I've done any competitive racing in years, so I'm really looking forward to it.

That's all for now, but I'll be back soon with some proper updates. :-)

Goodmorning everyone.

That's Chris Marten on the left, and Mick Dawson on the right. We went to hear them talk last night at the Marin Rowing Club. Those two totally normal looking dudes just sat their asses in a small boat and rowed their way, unsupported, to San Francisco from Japan. How freaking cool is that?!? I know zilch about rowing and I loved their story! Chris kept a blog while they were at sea for 190 days - you can check out their awesome story here.

Also been having great runs, great improvements at the climbing gym, and started a small weight lifting routine. Still not sure how far I'm going (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE GET ME A GARMIN!!) but I'm guessing it's pretty far, and I'm able to run (slowly) for a few hours without feeling like I'm gonna die if I take one more step.

And, I'm not the only one running! Einstein is back! Woo hoo!!!!!!

Got tricked into eating vegetables tonight when I came to the sad realization that those dishes really weren’t going to wash themselves. So, it was scrub down some pots and pans and cook up some flesh (Mmmm…flesh) or find something else. In the end, laziness won out and I threw together a salad with some veggies and hard boiled eggs that were taking up space in the fridge.

I told myself I would feel good about using the veggies, instead of allowing them to take their normal route, which is something along the lines of this: Carried home from grocery store --> put away in fridge with all sorts of yummy plans for them --> time passes --> “JES!!! What the F is this nasty shit in our fridge???!!!??? Wait…maybe this soft, bendy green thing is OK to eat – is it some kind of weird Korean vegetable?” “Uh…that was a carrot when I bought it.”

Anyway, you get the picture, it’s something pretty close to that – except Ant doesn’t curse that much. But whenever I do my Ant impersonation (which he looooves), I throw a bunch of swear words in.

Jeez. I’m rambling. So…thought I’d at least feel good about not wasting so much food (I really do hate wasting food) but it turns out I feel just like someone who had to force down a salad when they really wanted a burger.

Waking up early to run, 40 minutes of Bikram after school instead of my usual nap, and a salad for dinner?!? Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, what the heck has happened to me?!?

Anyway, after a phone call to SF that probably cost me an entire man won, I got a text from my coteacher (coteacher is a totally legitimate word here in Korea) about having some beers. Being good – and broke – I declined, but then I got this gem of a text, “BOB THE HOMEROOM TEACHER IS HERE!!!!” Well, why didn’t you freaking say so?!?

Bob. Bob the homeroom teacher. The funniest man on the face of the planet. I’m not even kidding when I say he’s so cool that having a few beers with him was actually an item on my bucketlist. He even talked me into drinking soju by promising on his wife that I was better looking than any Russian prostitute in Korea. Nice, Bob. If I ever have a 3rd grader, she/he is completely in your hands!!

So, I’m home…a little tipsy but not full on drunk, and I’m off to bed.

But first, a message for my awesome buddy Achilles, who spent an entire evening with me last weekend speaking really, really bad Spanglish. Actually, I don’t even know if it could be considered Spanglish, since we mostly just added an ‘O’ to every single word. Kind of like this:

Me: No mas cerveza or shot-o, because-o mi es drunk-o. Ant-o will be mad-o.

Achilles: Ant-o es in the bathroom-o

Me: Bring-o it on-o!!!

So Achilles-o, here-o you go-o: Gracias por introducing-o mi to Florence-o and the Machine-o. I love-o them mucho mucho. And-o I also love-o you!!

Goodnight, everyone. I think morning is going to come way too quickly for me!

So I just got finished with a project writing a few articles (occasionally people actually pay me to write shit for them, but it's usually topics I don't care too much about) on...wait for it...herpes. More specifically, on different treatments for herpes simplex virus type 1, which is the one that causes cold sores, not the "other" sores.

While researching, I read a bunch of crap that was designed to be a Q&A session, where people post questions about possible exposure or outbreaks, and the doctor answers them. I bet there's no way in hell they were answered by a real doctor, but that's not the point...

About 75% of the questions (which were primarily written by women, but again I think they're made up) started with statements like, "I had brief oral sex with a man for about a minute..." and "The oral sex was unprotected and lasted about 2 minutes total..." ONE MINUTE??? TWO MINUTES, TOTAL??? What the heck, people? Why bother? Who has oral sex for only one minute?!? [ed. note: except me, mom and dad. i'm not married so i don't do such nasty, filthy things, not even for only 1 minute. in fact, i had to look up what the term 'oral sex' meant.].

Jeez. No wonder I see so many unhappy people walking down the street. ;-)

“Nature does not hurry,
Yet everything
Is accomplished.”
-Lao Tzu

I have always loved this quote, and lately more than ever before I find that it really applies to my running. Certainly, nobody who has seen me on any of my recent runs around town would think I was in a hurry to get anywhere. I am slow. Very steady, but slow. I know there are points during every single run I have where I could push myself harder, make my legs churn faster, my arms pump quicker, make it up that hill before the dude with the walker, but I don’t. I guess at this time of my life I prefer a steady, balanced pace as opposed to constant stops and starts, even if it does mean that it will no doubt take me longer to get to where I need to be.

I’m OK with that. I’m OK with being slow because I have realized that at the end of each and every run I go on, what needed to be accomplished has been accomplished. Even things I didn’t set out to do, or didn’t even know had to be done. At the end of every run, I find that the stresses I was not able to withdraw from have instead withdrawn from me. I find that I am physically stronger, and my senses are sharper. I am able to really listen, instead of just hear. Instead of wanting to close my eyes and make it all go away, I see nothing but beauty in this concrete jungle that at times seems more like an imprisonment than a living situation I chose to put myself in. And my voice is, without doubt, louder, clearer (though still lispy), and – foul language and all – totally my own. The other voice that takes all too much joy in reminding me of my insecurities, faults, illness, and past mistakes is silent, finally recognizing that there is a force within me that it just cannot stand up to.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I sometimes wish I were naturally faster – so much so that more than once I have worked out elaborate training plans designed to increase my speed, and I could probably quote from memory every workout described in almost every “RUN YOUR FASTEST 5K/10K/HALF/FULL MARATHON EVER!!” article. But then I hear someone mention the date and comment on how it will soon be getting cold, and I realize that I know this not because of the date on the calendar, but because of the two golden leaves that appeared overnight on the tree I run by every day. I know exactly how much progress they are making on the bike path they’re installing near our apartment - not because I saw the newspaper article or cruised by in a taxi, but because I run past there so often that the workers have actually waited for me during rainy weather to tell me that even though it wasn’t open yet, I could run on the finished part of the track in order to avoid the muddy conditions of the area surrounding it. I know, during those rare moments when the sky is visible through all the pollution, exactly where to look to see the first star of the evening, because at my speed you certainly don’t make it home before dark. If I were too focused on shaving seconds off my time, speeding ahead as fast as I could go, running would still have offered me these gifts, but I would not have noticed them.

Running in the slow lane will never get me Nike sponsorships and trophies or the ability to run alongside Kara Goucher and tell her personally how fucking cool I think she is (even if I did meet her, I could never keep up), but it has given me the gift of getting to know - and really like - myself again, and of learning to accept progress one slow step at a time.

I know I promised you guys some pictures of monkeys and haven't delivered yet - I've been a bit busy. I'm very busy and important over here, you know.

Ran last night, and it really sucked. My body just wasn't in the groove it needed to be to complete the miles, and even with Rockzilla I was bored. Boredom is my kryptonite. It just kills me! But, I finished the planned run anyway and then headed to the gym to do a bit of weights. I was feeling a bit down by the small amount of weight I was lifting. I kept thinking, "I know I'm stronger than this!! Why am I so freaking weak today? I don't even feel tired! OMG, what if I'm sick again? I was soooo weak when I was diagnosed..." And then I remembered that the weights are in kgs instead of lbs. Haha. Makes a bit of a difference. Geez, I'm a moron. But, I'm a fairly strong moron, so at least I've got something going for me!!

So...here's what I'm thinking about my bike situation (I promise I'll shut up about it soon), and please feel free to weigh in. I was gonna just go and buy a bike similar to Tara - relatively cheap, cruiser style - because when we leave here in a few months I'll just have to basically find someone to give it to or ditch it somewhere. Which means I will have to get yet another bike when we move to wherever we move to next (What's that? There are apartments for rent in Manitou Springs, CO? Hmmm...did you hear that, Ant?!?). That will be the 5th bike I've paid for in 3 years (although one was a gift so that doesn't really count).

I was planning a surprise trip to Hong Kong for Ant and I for our upcoming anniversary, then he surprised me by saying he was going back home during that time (and didn't surprise me at all by saying that he didn't even know we had an anniversary - stupid boys), so I have some extra money that in my mind and budget was already spent. I was gonna use the cash to just take myself somewhere (why, hello, Saipan, you're looking lovely this time of year!) but now I'm thinking that maybe I should use that money plus a little extra and just buy a decent bike. I'll have the added expense of shipping it to wherever we go to next, but it might still work out better in the long run.

And if we end up going to a place where I can't use it right away (hello, beaches of Indonesia!) I can just ship it to PA, because what are parents for if not to store their adult children's stuff? Kidding, mom (sort of) (not really).

In other news - 2 more days of work and then a month of vaca! Off to the mountains for 3 days (Songnisan National Park), and then over to Surgao (I totally spelled that wrong - sorry, JoyRun!) for a few weeks of sun, sand, and surf! Man, I love my life!

Alright, enough of my incessant rambling. How are you guys?

Our coffee maker makes this strange sighing sound every ten minutes or so - the type of sound you make when you exhale all your troubles away.

I find it super comforting.

I'm turning into quite the morning person in my old age. That's something I never would have thought I'd become!!! But, here I am, waking up before the sun every morning even though I don't have to, and I'm really enjoying it. I meditate, I put on some music and dance, I read or sometimes get my run on. Sometimes I don't do anything but watch our nosy neighbor watching me.