Happy happy birthday to Tina!!!!
:)

(Written yesterday evening, but I couldn't post it)

Well, the weekend was mostly studying as predicted. I've discovered that the library at PSU is much better for studying than the public library; they have two whole floors designated as quiet study areas, and their hours are much more reasonable (well, it is a university library). I met my friend Gerhardt there on Sunday -- he's (currently) an optical engineer, and has about 5 degrees, one of them in teaching, I believe. He actually asked if he could help me with my diff eq homework, because he needed a review, so I finally took him up on it. He certainly did need a review ("Wow, eigenvalues -- they're really important, aren't they?"), so the study session was a helpful exercise for me in figuring out exactly how and why I was doing everything and explaining it to him step by step, which clarified things for me a lot. The test itself today wasn't great. I seemed to just blank out on something very very important which, of course, I needed for every problem, so I was quite stuck for a long time and going around in circles. Then I finally found the light switch and started madly scribbling for the rest of the period. Fortunately, he gave us quite a lot of extra time to work on the test, but even then I didn't finish. Sigh.

Sunday evening was a highly enjoyable experience. Hugo, Ellie and I went over to Philip and Beverly's for dinner and dancing. They fed us with copious amounts of delicious food, as usual, as well as good company and many laughs. Then we shoved the table aside and practiced "Simon's Fancy" for a while to the c.d. that Hugo burned of the Renegade Rose musicians session that afternoon! Tonight I'm typing up dance notes to send out to people so they can practice on their own (or at least try to remember the dances on their own). Things are coming together quite nicely with this team.

F was for Fried-day, S is for Study Saturday and Sunday.

I'm not kidding about the fried. I got home from work at about 5:30, and within 5 minutes I had taken off my shoes and jacket and climbed into bed. I slept like a rock for three hours or so, then woke up enough to get some food in me (fried rice, to go with the theme of the day), went back to bed around 10:30 and slept for another 10 hours or so. Wow. I knew I needed sleep, but I didn't know I needed that much! I'm better now. :)

I've got an icky math test on Monday, so studying for that will take up most of my workish time this weekend. Fortunately, I don't have anything but a lab writeup due this week, so I don't have a bunch of problem sets to worry about. Oh, shoot. I just remembered the two problem sets that were due on Wednesday that I didn't turn in. Okay, scratch that about not worrying about problem sets. Sigh. I'm looking forward to being done with this quarter. I have to figure out when my final exams are. I'm pretty sure they're on the same day; hopefully not the same time!

By the way, thank you Graham for your suggestion of "Thilly Thursday." I'll keep that in mind for next week.
:)

I should have let the day run its course before deciding on the appropriate T words to describe it. I'll add to my earlier T's with Terrible Twisting and Turning. Of the ankle, that is (and unfortunately the same one I sprained so badly a couple of years ago). We were dancing Bampton "Simon's Fancy" for six at practice tonight, and working on the chorus figure, especially the bit where the corners are supposed to come in back to back in the middle. I guess we stressed the idea of getting really close together a little too much, because Dave and I ended up stepping on each other somehow and my ankle turned completely under me. I ended up doing one-footed forrie capers, and those of you who know what a forrie caper is know that it's really hard to do them one-footed! But I decided to hobble out of the set and sub David in for the rest of the dance rather than attempt the side-steps on one foot. :} It got better and I danced a bit more later on, but it's still tender and swollen and probably won't be very happy tomorrow. So I came home and rubbed arnica gel all over it and made myself a nice big mug of hot chocolate as a bedtime snack. Because it's bedtime! Yes, folks, I'm going to bed before 10:00! Aren't you proud of me? :) I've been feeling very tired and slow this week, because I've been up far too late for too many nights, so I decided to forego the singing and merriment at the pub after practice tonight for the peace and quiet of a log-friendly bed. Good night!

And just to beat the alphabet game into the ground, T is for Tolerable Though Tired Thursdays. Not much to say about today, except I'd really rather just stay home and go to bed than go out to morris practice. Sigh. It'll be fun, but I'm already tired, body and brain.

I've been reading Graham's and Tina's blogs about the impending Viennese Ball (tomorrow) and have decided that I'm quite happy not going this year. It's a lot of fuss and hassle and dressing up and paying lots of money for a big event when all I want to do is go dance and have fun, which is possible (and highly enjoyable) to do for $2 at Jammix. I am sorry I won't be there to support Tina and the rest of Opening Committee and see them dance, but I'm sure they'll do a fabulous job even if I'm not there. Good luck!

So, to continue my alphabet theme of the week: W is for Widiculous Wednesday. (Okay, so you have to get out your baby voice for this one; it's the best I could come up with.) Not funny ridiculous, but "why can't anything go the way it's supposed to" and "can't these people get a clue?" ridiculous. My physics lab took about twice as long as it should have because the equipment is so old and shoddy. One of the rubber feet was missing from our centripetal force apparatus, so we had to put shims under it and clamp it to the table, readjusting the level after every trial when it shifted. Oh, and we had to start over again at one point because one of my lab partners forgot that we were supposed to do another trial so she changed the tension in the spring and there's no way to get it back to exactly where it was before. Sigh. Then it was "Mock Exam" day in my diff eq class, which basically means that we get into groups and are given problems to solve and present to the class, similar to problems that will appear on the test on Monday. It's a 140 minute class and there were six groups, so we should have had plenty of time. And we would have, if the first group hadn't taken an entire hour for their presentation! By the time we got to my group, which was second to last, class was technically over and we didn't have time for any kind of quality presentation whatsoever. What's more, we ran over so late that I missed the bus after the bus I usually take home, so I had to take the one after that, so I didn't get home until 8:00. Ugh and Grrrrr.

On a brighter note, here's wishing a very happy 9th birthday to Kirsty! This young girl is shaping up into quite a fine contra dancer.... :)

There's a pile of dishes in the sink that I don't even want to think about, but I'm certainly not going to do any homework tonight, so I might as well start on them. I'm meeting Gerhardt on Sunday afternoon to go over some diff eq stuph with him (he's an optical engineer, among many other things, and actually asked if he could help me with this class) and hopefully clear up some of the concepts before the test on Monday. Oh, and I did horribly on my physics test. Ugh. Anyway, enough random stuph for now. On to tackle the dishes.

If I were playing the alphabet game, I would say M is for Monday Misadventures, and T for Tuesday Technology Tie-ups.

Yesterday I drew the angel card "expectancy." I joked, saying, "well, I expect I’ll have a physics exam this afternoon." But little did I know what the day would bring. The short (everything is relative) version of my day is as follows:
- Left the apartment half an hour early so I could walk to the post office and finally mail back that silly differential equations book that got mailed to me twice. Arrived at the P.O. only to read the sign that says "Closed Sundays and Holidays," and remembered it was a holiday. Decided it wasn’t fair that, not only did I have class on a federal holiday, I had an exam. Walked back to the apartment and did some more work before catching my normal bus.
- Transferred buses downtown, boarding the only bus going to PCC (the 44) from that direction (there are only two buses going to campus – how silly is that?). Thought it was odd that a) it was not the usual bus driver and b) there were only three other people on the bus, when normally it is half full of students and picking up more at every stop.
- Wrote a letter to Quena sitting on the side of a highway in the pouring rain next to a broken down bus, half an hour before my physics test.
- Boarded the next 44 bus and hoped it would arrive on time. We were very close to campus, and I was convinced we would make it on time, when, at the last stop before PCC, the bus driver stopped, disembarked, and went into 7-11!
- Finally arrived at PCC just in time for the test, which had numerous errors, including one multiple choice question that didn’t actually have the correct answer as one of the choices.
- Decided that my angel card for the day and one of my favorite quotes from The Phantom Tollbooth went hand in hand to describe my day: "Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens!"

As for T for Tuesday... We’ve been having some significant technology problems at work for the last few days, with everybody’s computers running really really slowly and freezing up and work going at about a quarter of the normal pace. We’ve also been having issues with our newest monitor having orange lines all over the place. Somehow it became my job to deal with that particular issue, so I spent over an hour on the phone today with PowerMax and LaCie trying to figure out warranty information, how to send it back, etc. The stupid thing was that most of that time was spent trying to convince the guy on the other end that the monitor didn’t have a serial number on it. He kept asking if there was maybe possibly another little sticker on it with this sort of number, and I kept telling him, no, what I’ve told you is exactly what is on the monitor. There is no other sticker. The only good part about all this was the nice classical hold music, which I got to listen to for a good long time. I put it on speaker phone and Alan and I pretended we were listening to the radio, except without commercials. :}

And now it’s homework time. Two diff eq problem sets, a physics problem set, and a physics lab writeup due tomorrow. Oh, and a diff eq presentation to finish and test to study for on Monday. Phew! I’ll be glad when this quarter is over! I’m looking forward to only taking one class next quarter. It’s the other physics class I have to take, thermo and optics or something, and it’s taught by the same guy, which I’m not sure I’m too happy with. I don’t really feel like I’ve worked very hard in this class or learned very much that I'll remember. On the other hand, I’ll know what to expect. Anyway, back to work!

Yahoo! Finished all my problem sets ... before 10:00! Now all I have to think about in the morning is my physics exam at 2:00 that I haven't spent one brain cell's worth of energy on yet. But I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'm going to bed! :)

Well, I had a somewhat more productive afternoon at the library today. There may be hope yet. The guy sitting next to me at the library yesterday said that he was a math major in college (and grad school, I think). He could see I was having problems and asked if he could see my book, out of curiosity about what I was struggling with. He looked at it for a moment and then asked if I'd had linear algebra. I said, "umm, no." He said, "Then this is the first time you've seen matrices and this and that and the other?" "Umm, yeah." He couldn't believe that I wasn't required to take linear algebra before diff eq. Of course, I have no idea what linear algebra is, but apparently I wouldn't be having such a hard time with diff eq if I'd had it. Oh, well. Despite my apparent lack of sufficient prerequisites, tocay I completed all of one problem set except for the parts I need the c.d. for, and a significant portion of the other. I just wish the library was open for more than 4 hours on Sundays -- I was on a roll! Of course, I was also starving.... :P So tonight I'll hopefully finish the rest of those problem sets, then use my time before my physics exam tomorrow morning to study for said exam. Yikes!

Kit discussion for Renegade Rose proved fruitful, and the basic kit (we're still ironing out the details) is pretty much what I'd wanted all along, so I'm pretty happy with it. :) We were debating between crossed baldricks and some sort of waistcoat, and the only thing everybody could agree on was to let everybody choose which they'd rather wear. Now we're debating between short and long waistcoats. :P If you want to see a few versions of the kit we're thinking about, you can check out Lev's sketches and Nancy's sketch. The first page also has the RR business card that Lev designed. We're going to take the basic rose on black background and use that as the design for a patch that will go on the baldrics and vests for the kit. I think it'll look really nice. Now we just have to work on getting everybody's kit together before our first gig at the Pagan Fair on March 22nd!

We had a very sweet surprise yesterday. Around mid-morning there was a knock on the door, and who should be standing on our doorstep but a smiling Phil, soaking wet from the pouring rain, panting from running through it, and holding a boquet of daffydowndillies and a Valentine's card! What a sweetheart! Yay for happy surprises!

Ugh. Frustrating afternoon at the library. I went expecting to get a lot of my diff eq homework accomplished but I got virtually nothing done. It's not that I wasn't concentrating or was getting distracted from my work; my brain was churning wildly for three hours. It's just that I plain old don't understand the last four sections we've covered in this class. I was reading and re-reading the chapters and my notes, trying to use the examples to work through the problems and not having a clue what I was doing the whole time. I succeeded in completing most of one problem set -- the one that was due on Wednesday that I didn't turn in because I didn't understand it -- but I still have two more due on Monday, then two on Wednesday. And that's not even thinking about my physics exam on Monday or the problem set and lab due Wednesday. Ugh. I don't like not understanding things. Especially when I work this hard at it. Humph.

On a happier note, my Big Boy cookies were a huge success and got scarfed up quite happily by both my morris team on Thursday night and everybody at work on Friday (I had two people ask for the recipe!). It made me feel good to have something to give people, since I didn't have my act together enough to do cards or anything this year. I did enjoy all of the valentines that I received, all the more because I wasn't expecting anything -- thank you all so much! Especially the wonderfully nifty pink tie-dyed socks that Cass sent me; yay for happy socks! :) It was a pretty low-key V-day for me. I had a long day at work, came home and slept for an hour or so, then Hugo and I went for a bit of a walk and ate dinner at a Thai restaurant down the street. Yum.

Hugo got good news on the immigration front on Wednesday. He's been granted a 240-day extension on the greencard process, for all the days that he has worked outside the US since he's been here, so he has more time to get everything taken care of (not that he can do much more than wait still, but at least things aren't so urgent now). Big sigh of relief! Thanks to Mom and Graham for love and support and "sending American thoughts." :)

Mmmmm..... cheap champagne and cookie dough, that's my idea of dinner. :P Well, it's good as an appetizer. The leftover champagne I couldn't drink last night because I had schoolwork, and the makings of Valentine's Day cookies (Big Boy cookie recipe from Monee - yay!). Yum. Now the cookie dough is chilling in the fridge and I'm eating a quesadilla (with corn and tomatoes - my favorite!) and waiting until it's ready to be cookie-cutted and baked into cute little hearts and frosted. Hugo's out at BMM (Bridgetown Morris Men) practice tonight, so I have the apartment (and more importantly, the kitchen) to myself for another hour or so.

I've decided that I shouldn't even try to do homework at home anymore. I was struggling and fighting with concepts and problems last night and not getting anywhere on my diff eq problem set that was due today. I finally gave up and went to bed. Today I got out of physics lab early, sat outside in the sun (and wind), ate my lunch, and did the problem set in an hour! I suppose this teaches me that I focus better on academics when I'm not at home with all of the distractions of everything that needs to be done non-academically. I'm also learning that I really miss the library hours at Stanford - the public libraries here just can't compare. One of my main days for homework is Sunday, and the library downtown is only open from 12-5! The times that I'd much rather be out enjoying the gorgeous sunshine we've been having, or doing other things, leaving studying for morning and night. Sigh. I guess on-campus college libraries are a rather unique thing, and one I never would have expected to miss this much. I rarely studied in the libraries when I was at Stanford, but I find myself wishing several times a week that I had that study-area available to me here. Oh, well. I'll cope. But maybe I'll appreciate the libraries better when I come back to Stanford. :)

I think I might actually be getting into some sort of running routine here, which is really exciting. I'd love to do more exercising on a regular basis. Hugo and I have been jogging for the last two Saturdays, and we went yesterday afternoon. If I can keep that up, maybe with one more day a week thrown in, I think I'll start feeling really good (as long as my shins behave). I'm actually impressed at how well my body remembers how to run. I know it sounds silly when I put it that way, but that's what it is. Even after only a couple runs in two weeks, I could feel a significant difference in my stamina during yesterday's run. We did a shorter total distance, but ran the whole time rather than stopping to stretch in the middle like we've been doing. I was breathing hard, but I was still fine by the end of it, not dying like I was halfway through the first run we did a week and a half ago, and I felt like I could have gone farther. So that makes me hopeful.

I think it's time to go make some cookies now. Yum!

Yay for morris dancing! Boo for meetings about morris dancing! We had a two hour meeting this afternoon to discuss Renegade Rose/Trillium issues, figure out officers, kit, dues, and all sorts of stuph. It's still not entirely certain whether Trillium is indeed folding completely into Renegade Rose or whether they will continue to retain their own identity, but they're in for now, especially since three of them are now officers of Renegade Rose. Hugo was unanimously voted Foreman, and Nancy (from Trillium) and I are deputy forepersons, which basically means we're in on all of the decision-making processes. Lev (Trillium muso) is now squire, and Marti (of Trillium) is bag, or money-person. Everybody seemed pretty happy with all of this, as well as most of the other conclusions we came to, though it was a bloody long process getting everybody to agree on things. Whew! I'm glad that's over. But it's not, really. We've deferred the kit discussion to email, so that will go on a bit longer. But it will all turn out well in the end, as long as we pick my favorite. ;P

Hugo's dad sent him a really funny song that he's playing right now, called "Leopold Allcox," by Jake Thackeray. It's about a distant relation who comes to visit and totally destroys everything. The last line of it is: I saw him waving goodbye this last minute, waving his hand with my doorknob still in it. I had to listen to it a few times before I actually understood everything, but it's absolutely hilarious. Very English. It makes me glad I don't have any clumsy or obnoxious relatives -- you're all wonderful!

Yay for fambly! I just talked to several members of mine tonight, and it was lovely. Greg (my uncle) was out visiting from New York and staying at Monee and Pa's (my grandparents), so Graham and Mom went to spend the evening with them. I called Graham and talked to him when he got home, then called Monee and Pa's to talk to everybody else. Greg was surprised when I told him that, yes, I actually had expected him to answer the phone. :) It would have been lovely to be there to see him and visit with everybody, but it was nice to talk to all of them.

It's bed time now.

And I still haven't gotten any homework done today.

Sigh.

Ah, the wonders of running – good for body, mind and soul. I woke up this morning feeling all out of sorts with myself and just wanting to curl up in a little ball and stay in bed all day. But Hugo (eventually) made me get up and go for a run with him, and that turned things around amazingly well. The actual act of running felt much better this week than last week, when I just felt I was slogging along and beating myself into the ground until I would finally collapse – I actually felt like I was getting into a stride and wasn’t totally exhausted afterward. And after a run and a shower my outlook on things is much brighter. I love taking a shower after I run – it makes me feel extra clean, somehow, a clean that I don’t feel when I just get up and take a shower in the morning before work. It’s like I have to actually get sweaty or dirty in order to really feel clean. Which, I suppose, is part of the reason I loved taking showers in the evenings when I got home from work at the Marine Lab all sweaty and filthy. I felt like I’d actually accomplished something and was rewarding myself with a nice satisfying shower. But enough of that. I’m clean and I don’t smell all sweaty anymore. Big deal. :P

Hugo’s quest for the elusive greencard has come to its crucial moment, and he should hear around the end of next week whether or not he’ll be able to stay in this country, or if he has to move back to England. There’s nothing more he can really do about it at this point, other than fill out all the paperwork and hope, so that’s what we’re doing – hoping really hard.

Time to go down to the dungeon (ok, the basement) and start some laundry, then wash the dishes from last night (oh, the joys of eating dinner at 10:00 and not having a dishwasher), and finally get started on some homework. Fortunately, our internet access has been spotty (in fact, it’s down right now, which is why I’m typing this in Word and will post it whenever it comes back up), so there’s less of a distraction for me there. :}

Happy Saturday!
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….. Later (since I still can’t get on the internet to do a separate entry)…..
So much for doing homework. It hasn’t happened yet. I did get some laundry going, but then I got caught up on tidying the apartment and sweeping the whole place. Hardwood floors can be nice sometimes, but, boy, the dust bunnies are a force to be reckoned with! :P

Yay for Fridays! Yes, I'm home on a Friday night writing in my blog instead of being out partying or dancing or some other such excitement. But that's perfectly alright with me. Life has been moving quickly and I don't feel the need to be out just because it's Friday night; a quiet night at home in my pj's is just peachy for me.

I've been getting lots and lots of happy wonderful letters and things in the mail the last couple of weeks. Things from some of my favoritest people in the whole wide world -- my big brother, star-sister, and both Mommies! :) It's very wonderful to get letters, and I keep meaning to sit down and write some of my own one of these days. Why does it feel like I never have time to do the little nice things like that? It seems that I'm always either working, in class, or studying, and when I'm not I don't know where the time goes because I don't ever seem to get anything accomplished that I'd like to. Sigh.

I was talking with Hugo last night on our way to the pub after morris practice, trying to figure out where I might possibly be going with my life in general, and what on earth I want to do with school in particular. Part of the reason for taking this year off was to try to get more of a focus on what I might want to concentrate on with the rest of my time at Stanford, by getting further away from it for a while (though it has turned out not to be so much a year "off" after all, since I'm taking icky classes all year -- sigh). I declared myself as an Earth Systems major about a year ago, and I like the ideas and principles that the program offers and supports, but when I really think about it I have no idea where I would "go" with such a major. I think I'm technically in the "Oceans" concentration at the moment, but I'm leaning further and further away from that. The thing is, I can't say for certain what I'm leaning towards. None of the other Earth Systems tracks particularly draw me, but neither do any of the other majors at Stanford. Hugo said he couldn’t see why I’m in Earth Systems at all to begin with, observing that I don’t posses either of the two traits that he would expect to drive somebody into choosing that major (driving being a good thing): a thirst for knowledge, and political motivation (or even an opinion once in a while). Which I suppose is true. I like to learn things, but my memory is abominable and I can’t seem to retain any knowledge from one quarter to the next, let alone anything remotely permanent (academically speaking – I remember dances quite well, thank you). And anybody who knows me will know that I don’t have any sort of political inclination, so I’m not going into Earth Systems to get into the politics of changing the world. So why am I in Earth Systems? I say that I like the broad variety of the program, yet I complain that I have to take a whole bunch of classes that I don’t like, such as differential equations, economics and computer science. To be brutally honest with myself, I’m beginning to realize that part of the reason I gravitated toward this major is that it allows me to stay unfocused; I get a little bit of everything, but come out not having a grounding or in-depth involvement in any of it. Which is just fine and dandy for the part of me that’s scared to death of committing to something as big as my educational direction (even if I don’t think it’s what I’ll do for the rest of my life, though I’d like to think it had some relevance); but for the part of my brain that is finally realizing this, it’s even more scary because it just reinforces the fact that I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing and I don’t have that long to get my act together and figure it out, at least on a two- or three-year time scale. But this is all too heavy for a Friday night. I think I’ll eat some more cheesecake and go to bed.

Mmmmm...... I should definitely make cheesecake more often.
:)

Mmmm, cheesecake. Yum. Just got it out of the oven, so it won't be ready to eat for a few hours, but it sure smells and looks good! :) Much more appealing than all of the various tax forms I've been looking at this afternoon. I have to do double duty on filing taxes this year, since I have to file in California and Oregon. What a pain. But at least I've got a while to do it still.

To continue my textbook saga: I got a note in the mail yesterday from the people that sent me the Differential Equations book, admitting their mistake in sending me two books and asking me to please mail one of them back. It's a good thing I hadn't tried to sell it yet! The weird thing was that one of them was sent by UPS and the other by USPS. Not very consistent, so not too surprising that they made the mistake. But I'm glad it was that way and not the other way around. :}

And to catch up on the adventures at the apartment.... Hugo, Kirsty, Robbie and I went to the contra dance on Saturday night, leaving Ellie in the apartment by herself. It was a good dance, but we were all tired by the end, and ready to just come home, have a snack, and go to bed. But when we got back we found a note on the door from Ellie, saying "Sorry I had to leave, but there's a giant grey rat-thing in your kitchen under the sink. Mommy picked me up. -Ellie P.S. Joe called about the truck." We found the cupboard doors under the sink braced shut with a stool, so we figured it must have been a fairly good sized rodent to warrant that precaution. The rat wasn't under the sink when we looked, but we found the hole he'd gotten in by and plugged it up with an old sock. We went down to the basement to see if we could find the other end of the hole, but couldn't. By the time everybody finally got over the excitement and went to bed it was about 1:00 a.m. Unfortunately, we still haven't managed to get rid of the rat. He pulled the sock all the way through the hole to wherever the hole goes -- the sock that Hugo wedged in as hard as he could until he couldn't push it any further. We hear him under there every once in a while, but haven't managed to get him yet. I think we should take our friend Beverly up on her offer of her live trap. But meanwhile, call the land lady.

I have a light load of schoolwork this week, due to an icky horrible differential equations exam yesterday, and a physics prof that's been in the hospital for gall bladder surgery for the last week -- our homework deadlines have been put off until he comes back next Monday. It's kind of nice, but won't be so nice when I have to get my nose back to the grindstone next week. Here's to early bed times!

Ack! It's February already! How did that happen? Heck, it's still hard to believe that it's 2003! Shows how much I've been paying attention.

Renegade Rose had a great practice on Thursday. We had twelve dancers (!), several musicians, and lots of enthusiasm. I do enjoy teaching beginners a dance, but I'm hoping to soon graduate from the stage of having to go back to teaching the basics every week because new people show up. We're beginning to have kit (or "costume" for the uninitiated) discussions, and of course nobody can agree on what we should wear. Some of us did a spontaneous dance-out at the Farmer's Market last fall, where we wore bright baggy "harem" pants, black shirts, and arm-bands. That was fun, but nobody actually wants that for real kit, so we have to think of something else. I personally don't see a problem with harem pants, as long as you wear bells to keep from tripping over them when you dance -- they're nice and cool. :) Actually, the idea for that kit came from what I just wore to practice one evening! But that's another story. Renegade Rose is scheduled to dance at the Seattle Folklife Festival over the Memorial Day weekend, so we need to come to a kit consensus and hammer out a few dances before then. :)

Hugo and I went for a run this morning. Ugh. It wasn't a very long run, and we didn't go very fast at all, but still -- Ugh. I haven't been running in waaaaaaaaaay too long. Hugo wrapped my knee up in an ace bandage before we started (as a preventative measure -- I've been having some issues with my right knee for a few months). As he was wrapping it I was asking, "Are you sure it's supposed to be that tight?" He said, "Yeah, you're supposed to support the kneecap." It felt pretty tight, but I figured I just wasn't used to it. By the time we got to the end of the block, though, I had to stop and re-wrap it because it was cutting off the circulation in my leg. I was laughing, saying, "This thing is making me limp! I thought it was supposed to stop me from limping!" At which point Hugo remembered that you really don't have to wrap those things very tightly for them to work properly. :} We re-wrapped the knee, and the rest of the run was better, though he hit his stride right about the time I hit my "I can't go any further" point. Sigh. I need to do that more often.

We've finally had some rain up here. For a couple days straight, actually. It's good, because it's been a really dry winter up here, but it makes things rather muddy when it all decides to come down at once. :P And I discovered yesterday that my umbrella is pretty much useless. It's very wimpy, so if there's any wind at all, it will use that as an excuse to turn itself inside-out at every opportunity. If it hasn't done that for a while, it decides to shut itself up the proper way -- on my head, of course. Sigh.

I should probably attempt to do some schoolwork, especially if I want to go to the contra dance tonight. I just remembered this morning that I have a Diff. Eq. exam on Monday, so I should probably study for that as well. Oh, the joys of school. :}