Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel was on the radio in the dressing room of my gym this evening. I've been keeping a running tally of the inappropriate gym music that's been playing in the evenings at my gym on the fitness-y site I share with my friend Jackie. Peter Gabriel is much better than some of the other recent selections, but still. Not what I need immediately after disembarking from the elliptical.

Speaking of which, I kind of overdid it tonight. For some reason I got really dizzy about halfway through my workout. So much so that I decided to quit before I passed out and fell into an ungraceful heap in the corner of the room. There's nothing dignified about that. I think maybe I ate dinner too recently before heading to the gym. I'm pretty tired lately, too. It could be any number of things. I'll just try again tomorrow.

Despite going to the gym regularly for roughly the last month, I still don't like it. And by "don't like", I mean "hate with the firey passion of 1000 angry lions". There's nothing fun about it. I hate it from start to finish. I hear that at some point I won't hate it as much. But I'm not counting on it.

The Week in Review

I've spent the last week trying to salvage my graduate career. I found a mistake last week in the data I've been using for my thesis. I didn't make the mistake; it happened before I even came onto the project. And I still don't completely know how it happened. But the immediate result is that at least one chapter of my thesis is, if you'll excuse my language, complete crap. I've spent the last four days trying to evaluate how much it affects the rest of my work. And it's not like I'm hanging around with extra time to kill between now and when I defend. I certainly hadn't budgeted for this detour. But I guess I'm glad I found the problem now and not two more months from now. Why none of my 8 collaborators didn't notice this 5 years ago, I do not know. (Why I didn't notice it when I started this work 3 years ago I don't know either.)

I've been going to the gym as often as I can recently. My friend Jackie and I have a little bet going on to get ourselves in shape before we go to the beach this June. I've been trying to go early in the morning to get my treadmill time in before work. I really hate running. I do it because I think I have to in order to get in shape. But man, is it boring. I'm usually running along, sure that at least 10 minutes have gone by and when I look down it's been approximately 20 seconds since I last looked. I wish I could actually get something accomplished while I am there running along, going nowhere.

In other news, I'm going to go see my sister for Easter next weekend. She lives only a couple of hours away from now that I'm here in the midwest. In recent years, I've often only been able to go home and see my family once, maybe twice a year. So that's usually only been for Christmas and maybe Thanksgiving. (It's too bad that those are the two holidays we get time off for and they're only a few weeks apart!) I'm pretty excited about getting to spend Easter with my sister, even if it's only for 2 days.

Lightning, Thunder, and Tornados, Oh My!

I heard a tornado siren for the first time in my life this evening. That was entertaining. I wasn't sure what it was at first! I quickly figured it out. All in all I think I stayed pretty calm. But I did spend a quality 45 minutes in the bathtub (the only interior window-less space I have) with my cell phone and laptop, waiting to be blown away. I had the TV turned up loud and kept cracking the bathroom door so I could hear what the weatherpeople were saying. I don't the tornado actually touched down in town, but I know there was some property damage on the other side of town.

I'm not loving springtime in the midwest.