sciencegeek

So. Things have actually been quite calm here. Well, more or less. My co-worker had her baby who is absolutely adorable, and I actually held (I have, what I think is a fairly rational, fear of hurting week old babies by accident). He's super cute, and his parents are so, so happy.

For me, unfortunately, this means that I'm helping to break in a new nurse at work, which is sometimes frustrating. When I started, I started at the same time as S, so we learned together and inadvertently came up with our own system for getting things done without actually sitting down and coming up with it. It worked really well, but now there are things that she did that I have to try to explain to the new nurse - S was here when the new nurse began, but there are always things that are inevitably not covered, because no one thinks of them. I like the new nurse, but sometimes I want to get my own shit done, and not have to explain things. It's selfish, but I just see things piling up because I feel like I'm constantly being interrupted to teach something that would take me a minute to do myself. Which isn't helpful for the long term, but right now, it would make my life easier. I feel bad, because I do like her and she is good at what she does - I'm pretty sure I'm just used to the Way Things Were and not doing well with change. It will get better - I'm sure when S comes back, I'll complain while she is getting back into the swing of things.

I'm back to running - began in December. It feels good to be doing it again. I've signed up for a 30km race in March, so we'll see how that goes. I'm looking forward to it, though the training is going to be brutal. The course has some hills, and doing long runs with hills isn't ideal in the winter, since the footing isn't great...and the city has actually been on top of the plowing so far this year.

I downloaded the running app Zombies, Run!. It is pricey in that regular price it's $7.99. But I had read good things about it, and decided to give it a try. It's actually really fun. Basically all I have to do is set up my phone with the episode/mission and head out. The missions are about a half hour or an hour long, depending on the settings you choose. You go out, and 'collect items' on your run and put them in an Mary Poppins bag equivalent, since I'm not entire sure how one would run carrying...let's see on my last run I picked up a bottle of pain meds, 2 baseball bats, a book, a pair of pants, a pack of underwear, some shirts, a car battery, tinned food, a solar charger (and more), and still evade zombies. I may or may not be a little too into a story considering I keep wanting to shout at some of the characters (Janine, I'm looking at you after this last run I did), though I do adore Sam Yao, and Eugene and Jack (there love is actually canon). I did have to turn off the zombie chases (basically random times when I have to speed up because there's a zombie hoard) now, since I don't fancy losing my footing and falling. I'll turn them on in the Spring. I use the app a couple times a week for short, easy runs. I look forward to the runs because the storyline is good, and I want to know what happens next. They are coming out with Season 2 in the spring, so I'm hoping that the good writing continues. It does not surprise me that there is fandom for this app, even though I find it kind of funny.

I also joined tumblr and we'll see how long that lasts. I'm still trying to figure it out.

I had a race last night. Fridays nights are not my favourites for races because of work. I am lucky that I only work a half day on Fridays, but I ended up doing some errands in the afternoon and ended up feeling a little rushed. Plus timing when to eat is kind of hard. This race was hooked up with a 1500m track race afterwards, which I ended up staying for, because a local-ish guy was trying to meet the Canadian standard in it.

So firstly the track people? SO FAST. The race with they guy going for the standard was like 3 minutes 30-someodd seconds for 1500 metres. I'm pretty sure I couldn't run at that speed for one lap even if you paid me. He ended up missing the standard by about 2 seconds which was obviously disappointing, but it was so cool to watch. It's so different watching the races live compared to on TV. They seem to go so much faster when watching live.

The only the I didn't like about staying that long is that I didn't really have a dinner. I ate around 3:30 pm - 4pm, and had some watermelon and a Clif bar, but not much else until I got home at around...11 or so? So next time, maybe more food would be in order.

Anyway back to the race. The weather was better than it had been in previous years. We had a mini heat wave earlier in the week, and I was a little concerned that it would extend to Friday, but it ended up breaking on Thursday night. It was still a bit hot, but less humid than it was earlier in the week, and less humid than it had been in the past years for the race. I find 8k races hard in that I kind of have to think about it as a short 10k race or a long 5k race. So pacing was a little bit of an issue. Ended up finished at 39:37, which was ok. About 3 minutes faster than the last time I ran this race, so that's something. Ended up 2nd in my age group, which was also pretty sweet.

I get a little bit of a break for a couple weeks now, and not have such intense training for the next couple of weeks, which I'm kind of looking forward too. Give me time to recharge a little and then get back into training for the next race.

So, in Canada we have an upcoming election, and I gotta say, I kind of dislike all the parties, and know dick all about the candidates in my riding, except that they are older white men. Apparently one had a bbq recently. The incumbent didn't show up for a debate about healthcare or something. I haven't even received mail from any of them. But whatever. I don't like Harper, I'm not sold on Ignatieff, nor Jack Layton, and Elizabeth May sometimes...drives me nuts.

I feel like it doesn't matter who I vote for to represent me, because when it comes down to it, they're going to toe the party line, and vote however they're told to by their leader. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too cynical about any change actually happening in our parliament. I'm tired of all the partisan crap and sound bites I get to hear. I'm tired of thinking about voting strategically because it's the only way I think my vote can count, even though I don't necessarily like the candidate or the party. I'm tired of the ridiculous ads, and personal attacks. I'm tired of elections every couple years.

I am excited about the vote mobs a bit, though we'll see come election day, and how many young people actually vote. It's not like it's changed how the leaders campaign - they still aren't really talking to anyone under the age of, like 40 (maybe mid 30's since there is that "family pack" the liberals are touting).

I want is a parliament I can be proud of. I want a leader I can be proud of. I want to see people working together, and an end to the general insanity that is question period. I want to be spoken to like an adult, and respected by the leader of my country. I want the opposing parties to treat each other with respect. I want to feel like my voice matters.

So...I feel moderately bad about not updating as frequently as I used to, but at the same time not so bad because if I did, then you would realise just how boring I am, and how boring my life is. That being said, life has been pretty boring.

The running has been going fairly well. I think I'm getting faster, but I won't really know until the real race season starts. My first race of the season was a 10k about a month ago that went well - I wasn't slower than the end of last year, which was good, but I was secretly hoping I'd be faster. Still, it seems like a good start of the year.

Knitting is going ok. I'm not knitting as often as I want to, so it's going slower than I would like, but overall, it's going well. I want to start some shawls soon, so that will be fun (hopefully). I wish there was a decent yarn shop in town, but there are a couple of shows coming up that I'm hoping I might be able to get to. We'll see though.

Work is...work. I like most of the people I work with, though the one girl I work with (that happens to be the boss' daughter...I'll call her A) is sometimes annoying. A little too self involved, and loud for my tastes, but I like the other people so that helps. Still, the likely reason for me to leave will be because A drives me up the wall. It's just frustrating sometimes because she can be really lazy, and sometimes the rest of us get blamed. But whatever. Overall I'm enjoying where I work. Not enough stopping me from looking for jobs a bit more in my field, mind you, but I'm mostly enjoying it at this point.

Anyway, I think that's about it right now.

While I know that there are a few more appeals left this makes me happy.

Proposition 8 Overturned: Gay Marriage Ban Ruled Unconstitutional Links to Huffington Post (because I'm lazy, and took mooncharm's link)

coc_m_madness has nominations open for "Characters of Color March Madness". You can place your nominations here
so everyone go nominated Davis Quinton from Corner Gas. So go nominate your favourite characters of colour on TV, or in movies! Although, and this somewhat obvious, please read the rules before posting.

There should be more Spock/Sulu (and by more I mean some) fanfiction.

Don't judge me.

In other news, I had BEG's Abracadabra stuck in my head the other day at work.

Insert my obligatory "I haven't posted in ages" spiel here.

I've been running for the past month or so in the "Learn to Run" group I posted about earlier. It's been going well. We meet on Thursdays, and there's an unofficial group of us that meet on Tuesdays as well, which is good for me, because it's way easier for me to go out and run when I'm meeting up with people. There's someone that's about my pace in the group which is good for me. Considering there are only about 5 or 6 people in my group/level/whatever, it's a nice surprise. Oh, and I finally ran 5 km today, which, while not a huge milestone or anything, felt good to get done. I have a 5 km race next weekend that I somewhat foolishly signed up for last month, so actually running the distance was a good thing for me. At least I know what pace I can run and still finish the race at, if nothing else.

Been watching a lot of the Olympics as well. I have decided I need a pair pants that the the Norwegian Men's Curling team wear (as seen here). Aren't they fantastic? Anyway, I've been staying up far too late to watch some of the events, but oh well.

What else...my one co-worker still drives me up the wall on occasion, but I'm getting more patient about it. At least the running gives me a chance to bleed off any pent up anger. She's nice, but sometimes...

Oh yes, I got a new stove for the apartment. The old one was, well, old (to quote the guys that brought the new one "wow that thing is ancient"), and kept blowing its fuses, so they got me a new one which is quite exciting. I can finally use the oven again!

I think...that's about it that's new, or somewhat new with me. Hope you all are having a lovely day.

Happy Palindrome Day, all! I apparently noticed this really, really late.

I'm going to try to get out Christmas (what may become holiday/new year) cards this year. So...if you would like one fill the poll. I'll also screen comments if the poll space is too small or something (or if you don't trust me to set this up right. I feel like this may be a good wariness for you). I can't promise anything exciting for cards or contents. But you will get mail?