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January 22, 2005

snowed in

Chicago Tribune | Chicago's heaviest snow since Jan. 2002
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Posted by christina at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

i want so badly to believe that / there is truth, that love is real

Well. Let's see. Let's have update time.

The physical therapist realigned my hips. it caused me some pain this past weekend in my other hip. it hurt so bad that i couldn't run, which pissed me off more than the pain. It was alright monday morning as i ellipticaled for an hour. it was too cold to run, so i went to the student athletic center. it is quite convenient and not that busy from 7:30-9. I am absolutely in love with my ipod mini. i have no idea how i would ever live with out it. it is so pretty and light. i clip it to my shorts and elliptical away. or i put it in my pocket of my running jacket. it is awesome. in fact, i just went and redid my running play list. and also a folk rock list for during the day.

current favorite band: the postal service.
i should have listened to all the good things i had heard about them before. they are awesome.

work is going smoothly, though life seems to be getting in the way. the move. the physical therapy. the doctor seeing. the filling that came out of tooth. the oil change needed. the dishwasher man.

i worked from home today as i was waiting for the dishwasher man to come install the dishwasher, which has been the month long saga of waiting for the damn thing to come in from back order. come to find out that the model ben picked was the only one which would not work in the space as the electrical line is funky due to the wine chiller next to the dishwasher. (yes. wine chiller built into the kitchen. i freely admit that there are many things about this apartment that ridiculous.). the guy was my age and super nice. turns out that he never finished high school and is making 80 grand a year. dude. i agreed with him that too many people go to college and obtain loans for degrees that they never will earn any money with. (Practical degrees, people. though ben has already made me promise that i will let our kids major in whatever they want. i agreed, but i can be quite subtle. ha ha ha)

anyways, the guy was cool and it was strange he told me how much he made after i told him that ben and i were both graduate students - ben becoming a teacher. i do have to admit as i am currently bored of being by myself in the apartment that the dishwasher man is looking mighty fine. i am NOT cut out for this housewife crap and though i enjoy a lot of the little things, the overall feeling is bothering me. i know i spoil ben. and he spoils the cat. sigh.

life has been quite busy lately. work is busy. i am quite enjoying the intro to materials class i am taing. it is so easy it rocks. i'm trying to get my apartment in shape. i really want someone to rerent it. but really, it is not different than before, paying on somewhere that i'm not living at. people just don't move right now. it is too cold.

though quite chilly the past couple days, this warm winter keeps trucking as it got over freezing today. unheard of in January. i ran the majority of my run this morning with my coat around my waist. i had to run in the street because of the snow and ice on the sideways. it was quite a nice run even though my cell phone in my sports bra on vibrate so i would answer it when it rang plan failed due to the cell phone spacing out.

highlight of work: things working including my beautiful electrical circuit so that i could make the voltage do the opposite thing. i.e., one device outputs a voltage that is proportional the partial pressure of a gas. i want that signal to control the flow meter inversely. when the gas is too high, i need to voltage to be smaller so that the MFC will reduce the flow rate. i have done it with batteries and reversing the polarity of the voltage, so i did a happy dance. now if it will just work in real. we'll see tomorrow.
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Posted by christina at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

it's a luscious mix of words and tricks / that let us bet when you know we should fold

Really people..like I haven’t had enough physical therapy to last me a lifetime.

So I’ve had bursitis is my hip since I started the whole walking thing a second time. The pain comes and goes. Comes a lot if I don’t work out or if I sleep on it a lot (therefore I always have to be on the side of the bed that sleeping on my left side will enable be to face out). I learned to live with the pain, and then it got better. Then the past couple of months it has come back. I attributed it to upping my mileage a mile on my morning runs. Then my right big toe started hurting. I went back to icing both the hip and now the toe. I thought the toe was just sprained from overuse. I got really good shoes. They didn’t help. Ben finally convinced me to see the doctor, my current favorite doctor who happens to also be the sports medicine doctor. I went this morning and she was awesome. She diagnosis something I had suspected since “the accident” that one of my legs was longer than the other. Not exactly, one of them act longer than the other because of the way my biomechanics hold my hips.

I should have seen here a long time ago…except I’m pretty sure this is her first year here. I should have seen a sports med doctor instead of my very cute hot springs regular doctor or the rehab doctor. Dr. Hot didn’t have the specialization and Dr. Rehab(s) were way more use to trying to get people back to an independent state than a chick that wanted to run.

So off to a couple of sessions with the PT. Hopefully they are going to correct my biomechanical issues. Unfortunately I’m sure it is going to involve some stupid strength building exercises that I HATE and really don’t have time for. I just really want them to put a lift in my shoe. But really what I want it to be able to run for many many years. And the upside is that this might reduce the hip pain, but really all I hope for is a reduction in the toe pain. Stupid toe. Though, oh, I forgot, the ice and advil.

and the finger pain i didn't even mention cuz it involved in involuntary meeting with mr. sidewalk. scraped knuckles. ugh.

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Posted by christina at 4:25 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2005

the snow has not melted.

the snow has not melted. damn weather.com for getting my hopes up. snow be gone!
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Posted by christina at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

January 7, 2005

eyes wide open

Well, after 15 months of basically living together, ben and I are going to actually live together. Well, I have moved in. All of my stuff is at his place (our place) now. It is quite convenient. We decided to do it before Christmas and decided to be quick about it when I got back as to do it before the quarter got really busy. So Tuesday I moved in. We also went to Ikea and got really cool dresser and end tables. So I spent the day unpacking and he spent it putting together the dressers. I am quite excited about the dressers. I didn’t really how much I missed having a dresser. They rock. The bedroom looks like a real bedroom…so homey.

I am about half unpacked. Tuesday night through Thursday morning it snowed something like a foot. So all of the taking stuff where it needs to be in small trips (ie salvation army stuff, work stuff, tom stuff (he’s taking my a/c and my kitchen table. Yay!) fell through as I haven’t been back to my apartment since the move. So much snow. Yesterday I couldn’t get my car out of the parking space. I rode to school with ben and rode the el home. He spent some time when he got home getting my car out of the parking space it was buried in and into one thought to be easier to get out. It was easier like I could get out, but I had my doubts this morning as I was trying. Damn snow. Thank god that it is all going to melt this weekend. Then only thing worse that snow is snow that has been around for a while and is dirty and gross. Though because I am coming home late tonight (dinner and a movie with Tom), I get the garage because parking is bad that time of time anyways, but combine it with streets filled with cars which cannot move, parking is going to be way way bad. I first loved the apartment because of the washer and dryer. I feel that I am going to love having moved in because I now have some claim on the garage spot. Not that I usually want it because it is really hard to park in, and therefore prefer parking on the street as it is much easier and faster get away in the morning, but coming back late Friday nights and not having to worry about parking is going to rock my world. OH- the big news today is we just change the phone bill so it comes to be so I can get a parking permit for the neighborhood instead of dealing with the visitor permits. Yay!

I so haven’t been writing at all. I’m quite busy, as usual. I got an ipod for Christmas, which I have fallen in love with. I love it! I got some cool snow boots, which have really really come in handy with all the snow. They are AMAZING. And some other stuff, my family is way extravagant, but it makes us happy to give. I love giving; it is the receiving that I’m not too good with. Though the new knives are also really nice. I never new what an asset in the kitchen a good set of knives are. We also got a digital meat theometer which is so cool as you stick it in the meat and run the wire out the oven and into the reader. It is really nice to be able to read the temp without opening the oven. And as my new cookbook by Alton Brown, my cooking hero, says, never ever ever open the oven once you’ve put in the meat until you want to take it out.

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Posted by christina at 5:29 PM | Comments (0)