snowsnowsnow

After joking about sending a letter to the National Weather Service to remind them of the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, they proved themselves to be accurate. Well, they actually rather dramatically underestimated - this morning we had a little more than a foot of snow.

I know there are some people who are thinking, "And?" because that is minor, but this was in the top 5 heaviest snowstorms in this area ever.

So today was a snow day. Which, you know, SNOW DAY!! And then I remembered that I don't get paid for snow days anymore, which sort of blows. I made it out in the afternoon, but had a few minutes when I worried that I was going to get my car (a RAV-4, a small SUV!! Not a little car!!) stuck trying to get to the alley. Driving downtown wasn't too bad, you know, given that there was OVER A FOOT OF SNOW.

Tonight was supposed to be the first night of evening group runs for the mini-marathon training program, but because of the weather they called it off. I did my miles on the indoor track, though I'm pretty sure IUPUI has shoveled and treated the sidewalk along the canal, so either tomorrow or Friday I'll try to get outside.

I just got the call that we will have another snow day tomorrow, too. I picked up the third season of Lost (yeah, I'm behind) so at least there is that. Sawyer without his shirt? Yes please. Also, I'll be able to go to the gym early, work on my paper, and make it to knit night in my neighborhood.

a list.

1. Tonight was the first night of official "training" for the mini, meaning the first time I track mileage and all that jazz.
2. It FINALLY dawned on me that I only started to have blistering issues when I started running on the indoor track, and that the constant curving to the left might be partly to blame.
3. I ran on the treadmill tonight, no blistering, but DANG, that long on a treadmill, while physically easier, is mentally so much more difficult! Make-me-want-to-stab-my-eyes-out boring.
4. Tomorrow I'll be going to the running store for winter running gear.
5. They are predicting Snow-magedon (again) for the next two days. This could make Wednesday's outdoor run interesting.
6. I found an apartment! And I'll be moving in two weeks! And it is lovely and in a neat neighborhood! While the rent is more then I wanted to pay, the utilities that are included should off-set (and possibly more than off-set) the increase.
7. I got a bit of writing done on my thesis this weekend, and it is nice to write and think in a way that reminds me that I really do still have higher-order thinking skills.

1/2 marathon training!!

Tonight was the orientation meeting for the 1/2 marathon training program I'm doing through my gym!

+ The representative from The Runner's Forum is awesome and gave me a little stick of body glide to see if it would help with the blisters I'm getting on the bottom of my feet (I bought my shoes there a few months ago) FOR FREE after checking to make sure they fit right!! Another reason why local running stores rock.
- There was no pace group between 11 min/mile and 13 min/mile, so I went to the 11 at first. One woman I asked was AWESOME about it. The other was a bitch.
+ They started a 12 min/mile group for the handful of us who knew that 11 was too fast and the people there are really nice, and both have done this race before.
+ I'm pretty sure our group will grow, as there were people who were really not prepared (had never run outside/off of a treadmill, had never done a full 2 miles) in the faster group.

Misc.

1. I'm officially signed up for the Indianapolis Mini-marathon (a half marathon during 500 weekend) training program through my gym. The first meeting is next week, training runs start the week after.
2. I started my class last week, and feel pretty good about things overall. I'll be focusing my research on neurodevelopment (a fancy way of saying brain-based learning, or learning style) and responses to intervention, with a focus on how to determine learning style in very young (and sometimes not very verbal) children. While my instinct is to focus on Gardner, it seems that Levine developed the more popular theory right now.
3. It's COLD, yo. Canada, please take back your air.
4. THREE DAY WEEKEND, FTW.
5. I'm looking at apartments. The one I saw today would have been reasonable IF utilities were paid OR it was $50-100 less. And if it didn't smell funny. Like bad pipes funny. BOO.
6. We had a two-hour delay because of the cold. It would have been nice to have been notified before I got to school, but whatever. We had about half of our class today, and it was AMAZING!! If we had that many kids everyday, we would get SO MUCH DONE!! Goodness!!

When an arts major studies statistics

"It is MEAN to call me AVERAGE"

"The MEDIAN is in the MIDDLE of the street"

"It is COMMON to follow the latest MODE"

Dorktastick? yes. Effective? YES.

(and I'd like to offer a little shout out to the diagnostician at Gallup Jr. High who explained most of this to me in easy to understand chunks a few years ago. Or at least explained enough for me to interpret test results and make this stuff easier to parse since I won't need too much of it, anyway. Thanks, Mike, wherever you are.)

Oh, and...

Because this blog is exported to my Facebook account and there has been a surprising number of people from high school and college who have added me recently, some more background. About four years ago, I made a pretty significant change and over the course of about a year, I lost about 100 lbs. While I'm no longer at my lowest weight (Damn North America and your delicious, delicious cookies. Oh, and Southeast Asia and your horrible, horrible beer) I've maintained most of that loss over the past two years, and I have GOALS and will be putting forth more of a concerted effort to work towards them. And for those who want to ask but haven't, no, there was no surgery - all diet and exercise.

World's Worst Blogger

It has been pointed out to me that I well may be one of the world's worst bloggers. It has been approximately eleventybillion years since the last time I posted here, and for a while I was thinking about writing a "So long and thanks for all the fish" kind of post.

But recently I've been thinking about a way to shift, to make this a space that is a bit more applicable to what my life outside of Korea is transitioning into. So while for the past two years this has been mostly a "Korea blog," I think this will start to shift more into a "academic/fitness/vegetarian/teacher/knitting" blog. Or maybe just "whatever" kind of blog. I have to admit that what it comes down to in large part is that I'm really too lazy to set up something totally new, and too indecisive (and not all that interesting) to set up a blog for any one specific issue.

So, in handy bullet-point format:
1. I am a Title 1 tutor at a charter school in Indiana. I started working with several grades, and was recently moved to full-day Kindergarten interventions. As a former 7th/8th/9th grade teacher, this has been more than a bit of a transition.
2. I will be compacting two semesters of research/writing this spring, and if I can pull this off, will have a local college recommend me for elementary and special education licenses in Indiana.
3. I'm in the process of brainstorming of ideas for the thesis, but it will likely have something to do with behavior management. Working from one's strengths and all that.
4. I am (still) a pesca-tarian (mostly-vegetarian-who-eats-fish), and have become much less flexible (for a while, I would make exceptions in certain situations)
5. I will be running the Indy Mini Marathon (a half marathon during 500 weekend) this May. I start training for real in about three weeks. Eep.

Because so many of the people I care about are scattered all over this planet and I love to read what you all are doing, I'm going to try to put forth more effort in this little space.

Wishes of peace, love, and happiness for the new year!!