girmander

the troubles that my sister is currently going through with her wedding plans futher cements the reasoning of why i want to elope. and the expense! GAH!

*i admit that i'm a cheapskate or "frugal-ish" if you will*

about frugal-ish. yes, i did get a designer gown and yes he is getting a custom made suit.and yes we're getting married at a really posh place. but in reality it will be far cheaper than having a big bash. mostly i think i'm doing this to keep my sanity. i give props to c and p... cuz dude i would crumble if i had to organize a wedding.

other than that, more random <br/> fun. i am a concerned analyst.

on the tri front, i made the lion get up at 8:30am this past saturday to go to a tri seminar. there was a cool bike there. and alot of secret and not so secret "type a'ers" like me. it was interesting. there was this old dude who freaking actually alluded to his 40 min/mi swim time was slow. i was like grandpa, you could kick my ass in swiming and wipe it with your "slow" mile. i was like holy crap i'm a turtle. *self defeat sets in*

while we we up that early, we went to get coffee at caribou and i see these. i want one so bad for my morning coffee exercise buzz!! it's perfect because i can only drink a 1/2 cup and it's small enough for that! on the yoga front, i haven't really figured out what i'm doing quite yet. i love the time i spent with rolf and i know i need to get a move on for tim coming in april. i feel "blocked" :\ also, alphastate wants me to work towards the equipment training. apparently, they're getting more clients than they can handle and they would like me to take some on. very cool.

other.. other...
that new eminem tune with nate dogg is so damn catchy. and i'm really enjoying natasha bedingfield.

after listening to the addicted to race podcast in january and their fabulous interview with octavia butler, i went to get her latest book fledgling and i couldn't put it down. i have plans of purchasing other books of hers as well.

but, in my rss agregator today, a slate article caught my eye. it simply had the title of octavia butler. sadly, octavia butler died last month unexpectedly.

:(

it's funny how things are cyclical. it seems that everyone almost has the same feelings or experiences at the same time even though we think our lives aren't intertwined or connected.

just yesterday afternoon i empathized with a co-worker about her grandmother being sick. and just last night, we had to call the squad on our grandmother. both of us had our grandmothers live with us. so similar yet so different.

thank goodness i had CPR training just a mere 3 weeks ago and that i was there. because if my siblings would have followed the exact instructions the lady on the phone gave, my grandmother would have been in worse shape than she already was. because YOU DO NOT administer CPR to someone who's breathing and has a pulse. hello!!!

we did end up laying her down after awhile. but my primary concern was that she was going to lose control over her tongue and choke on it. and then she became incontinent. that's when i knew it wasn't that she passed out or was "dizzy" and blacked out (FOR 5 MIN?!?!) i've seen it happen with both of my great aunts. i KNOW what the signs of a stroke are. you can't forget about it when you're a kid and have it happen at your house. thank god all of us were there.

my friends laruga and kenny joined the RPAC AND surprisingly kenny woke up this morning at 5am with snow on the ground to go work out. i freaking cracked up because he is so not a morning person.

so, i think laruga is going to do the tri with me. i just have to get her into the pool. she won't go because of the "chlorine poisoning her" *eye roll* just imagine the pool without chlorine to kill the bacteria. ewww.....

so, i'm up to 2.5 miles today. i ran it sub 10min mile splits. and it felt really good. i could tell that my lower right leg was getting cranky but, i think doing steady split miles instead of doing it as an 8 /10 split helped alot. but since i forgot to grab an ice bag out of the freezer today, i'm improvising with a frozen water bottle. pretty ghetto.

since laruga joined i have someone to motivate me to get back on the wagon with my practice. also, i'm getting ready to plunk down some serious dough for a road bike. i need to go to the bike store and make sure my size is correct before i go buy it.

s'funny how you can go through life thinking that no one pays attention to you. i mean even throught this day and age when we are connected by this thing called the internet. i STILL feel like i am alone and by myself sometimes. i'm thinking it's a virgo trait as well (i digress...) but then someone emails you out of the blue and you're like, wow... it's so easy to find people and connect when you need it the most.

randomly i get emails from people in the columbus area who are stilligans like me. and it totally shoots me back to yeah... i have this disease. i am "damaged". i *shouldn't* be able to do what i do now. and yeah i am extremely lucky. i just went back to the site after not visiting it for years. and reading over the bios makes my heart heavy. hip replacements, knee replacements, ect... i know i hardly talk about my illness and this is why. this is exactly why i took myself off the list and why i never go to the site. it angers me that it takes people 5 years to ween themselves off of 1 mg of prednisone. it angers me that a 20 year old needs a total knee replacement. it angers me that people die of complications to the disease. and it angers me that i am 1 of a few that take matters into her own hands.

so, when i looked in my gmail box this morning and found another letter from a mother who's son has been diagnosed as of 3 days ago. my heart went out to her. it sucks to be 20 and diagnosed with "arthritis". i mean isn't that an old person thing? and what does it mean for me and what i'll be able to do for the rest of my life? i totally know what he's going through. and i hope he's ok. i guess we'll see this weekend when i meet up with them...

umm... NOT.

but anyways, since i come from a crazy g33k3d out family, it's natural i like technical things. hrmm you may ask how g33k3d out we are? well... i am a coder, i'm marrying a info sec lion, my brother yam was a coder and then went back to school @ u ill–urbana-champaign (he needs to googleplex himself and then ME!), my sister sassybat graduated in MIS and she's marrying petyrrahl who works wonders with open source tech and python, my other sis chibiuk is graduating in vis com, and my brother jujiet is in ece. whew. and that's just immediate family. let's not get into extended family.

so, i went to the spring <br/> conference @ OU (go bob cats!) this past thursday and i had alot of fun. saw alot of people that i haven't seen in a long time. it was nice! i realized that i knew quite a bit of people. it actually shocked me.

what really caught my attention was the session on AJAX. but, not just AJAX. specifically ruby on rails. ok, i've done like 2 tutorials on it. but, whoa... very cool. i'm slowly transitioning myself into a more OOP state. and in some aspects fusebox has helped alot. also, going to the mook flash OOP boot camp in LA was very good too. it's hard for me to do this since i work in a real job 40 hours a week and i'm self taught. sometimes, i just don't have time to play around with these concepts until i have something i can work on in downtime. and THAT gets thrown out the window when my downtime is like 4 hours a week (not consecutively. are you crazy?!?!). so i was talking about petyrrahl about ruby and he's as excited about it as i am. he currently codes alot of python. but i think he'll be looking into ruby at the same rate i am. i'd like to make a killer web app but since our set up here isn't the standard setup (mySQL, apache, ect.. ect..) i'm not sure how that will work. not only that, we're a CF shop. i don't think i want to subject anyone to something they won't know how to fix. so, maybe a goofy fun project? who knows. on the other hand, not sure what i'll code as AJAX. it seems pretty overkill and not useful for the things i do or need to get done.

things that make you go hrmmmm...