Journey to 13.1

Just about to start my first training run for the half.

A few weeks ago, after I turned in the final draft of my thesis to my advisor, my visiting teachers took me to dinner to celebrate. Sitting around eating burritos in Freebird in Sugarhouse, they asked what was next. I jokingly said I was thinking of running a 5k by my birthday. Both of them said no way - that's so much time, you can totally run a half-marathon!

Record scratch.

A HALF-MARATHON?!? 13.1 whole MILES?!

Well, long story short, I'm registered to run a half-marathon the day before my 29th birthday. Because I'm notoriously un-self-motivated (as the sixty pounds I've gained since my mission can arrest to), I roped my little sister into doing it with me. She had her second baby a few weeks ago and was just cleared to start exercising again, so I thought she would be a) up for it, and b) at about the same fitness level. (Except she's probably more fit than I am, ha.) She agreed, like a crazy person, so now we have 20 weeks to go from total dweebs to rockin' 13.1-milers.

I'm not going to lie. This is terrifying. I'm not a big believer in myself. I stay far away from hard things, and when I can't avoid them, I procrastinate and whine about them (see my Facebook page or my Instagram for proof of this re my thesis #annmarievsgradschool). But the other morning, I was lying in bed at my sister's house, with my baby niece snuggled in my arms, breathing slowly and totally adorably as she took a morning nap. I, having been awoken by her early-morning serenade and unwilling quite as yet to get up and greet the day, invited her to come lie in bed with me. As she slept and dreamed next to me, I lay thinking about this terrifying prospect of running a half-marathon. It was such a wonderful, precious moment - Baby J is so confident and full of life, so sure that she can do anything. I didn't want to spoil that memory by chickening out of something that would be hard but worthwhile. I didn't want to look back in ten years and admit to her that I didn't believe in myself but that of course she can do anything. I want her to think I'm the coolest, most amazing auntie on the planet, and part of that means I'm going to have to keep up with her - and since she's just like her momma, she's a 3-volt machine running on 90 volts.

So here's to doing hard things. And believing in yourself, even if only for the sake of others.

Here's me on W1D1 (stealing my roomie's mirror): 188.6 pounds, hips 43", waist 37", upper arm 14", thigh 27"

Saturday night adventures

Look who showed up to my hotel tonight! Someone must have tripped the fire alarm (accidentally or not), because I was happily updating my Instagram with pictures of my adventure today when it went off about 9pm~ish. Two honest-to-goodness fire trucks came racing up the street, sirens blazing and lights twirling, and some real, live firemen went into our building and checked everything out. I can attest that San Francisco's Fire Department is definitely quick-response. They were here in less than five minutes. Not that I hope I'm ever in an actual fire, but if I ever was, I'm glad to know help would come quickly.Thankfully, there was no fire, but it did make tonight the most interesting and exciting Saturday night I've had in a long, long time!

The joys of an internet-enabled phone

It's been ages since I've updated my blog. I was busy with the end of the semester, but that's really more of an excuse. I just haven't been doing much that was interesting. Mostly I've been procrastinating my final papers and freaking out about said procrastinated papers. There was a lot of drama. Some painful lessons were learned. I didn't get much sleep and the last week of the semester was pretty hellacious. Some of my professors indicated their disappointment in me. But I was too busy freaking out about getting ready to go to Korea to worry about it much.

That's right, I'm going to Korea this summer! I packed up all my stuff into a storage unit and after I handed in my last paper I headed out of SLC on my summer adventure. I'll spend the next four months living out of my carryon and a backpack. I spent the first few days of May at my grandma's house in Logan and got to see my little brother's college graduation. I'm currently in the Bay Area to see my friend graduate from Berkeley Law, and Sunday evening I'm flying into LA to visit another friend. Then a week from tomorrow I'm flying to Korea! It's scary and exciting all at the same time. Especially since I have no idea what will happen to me at the end of the summer: I have no home and a very uncertain financial future. Not to mention no idea what to do with my life after grad school...or even what to write for my thesis. I try not to think about it too much.

Happy New Year!

So...somehow, without quite meaning to, it's been several months since I've written an actual post for my blog. I could blame it on being in graduate school, but the truth is I was just lazy. That's true of a lot of things I don't get done, actually.

But here it is, a new year -- 2014! I'm pretty sure I'm still stuck somewhere about 2009, 'cause it blows my mind to think I'll be turning 28 (!!), I'll soon have a one-year-old niece (!!!), and my baby brother will join the ranks of the double-digit age club (!!!!) this year. Not to mention my parents are steadily working their way through their 50s. And who knows? Maybe I'll finally get a sister-in-law this year, too!

This is the traditional time for a few resolutions, made with passion and well-intentioned vows to change. I'm not such a huge fan of resolutions; I always end up loosing steam about two weeks into January, and then I just feel guilty. I'm not immune to the impulse, I'm just too cynical to make a (public) attempt. Instead, this year I made a list of twelve experiences -- one for each month of the year -- I want to have in 2014.

shoot a gun

go to the ballet

visit LA

go camping

attend the symphony

learn to cook some Korean food

organize a service activity

get a massage

rock climb

run a 5k

spend an afternoon at a museum / planetarium

hike to the top of a mountain

I must make sure to take copious pictures and blog about each of them. I also want to make sure to do each of these with someone, and not just do them for the sake of crossing them off my list. I want to do them to make memories and experience something new. Basically, I want to force myself to leave my house at least once a month so I have some semblance of a social life.

Happy September!

It's the best month of the year. And not just because I was born in it. ^_~

There must be something about September 1st, because I moved into a new house exactly one year ago on September 1st, too. It's nice not to be homeless anymore.

T-47 Days

This is me almost six (!!) years ago in July 2007.

This is me a little more than six weeks ago in March 2013.

This is me today at approximately 5:25 pm, getting ready to go on the first run I've run deliberately...and felt motivated to run in a long, long time. 

This is me upon returning from the aforementioned run, approximately 5:53 pm.

And this is me, sharing how I feel after finally quitting making excuses (no running shorts that fit, my shoes are too old and worn out, I'm tired, I've had a hard day and I just want to sit in bed and eat ice cream while watching TV, etc, etc) and just doing it. 

I think Nike is on to something.

So what's the 47-day countdown to, you ask? 

This.

Go here for more details.

That's right, I've decided to stop making excuses, stop procrastinating, stop pretending I'm happy being a couch potato and run a 5K. Not a timed one (not yet), but a fun one. Hopefully that will keep me motivated and excited to run, because I've got less than two months to whip myself into shape (well, a shape that isn't squishy, anyway) for it. I'll be following the Couch-to-5K running plan, which has many enthusiastic adherents and seems to have worked for more hopeless cases than mine.

Grad School Is Happening

I've made some big changes in my living space and I just got back from an awesome vacation, but this is all I'll share for right now:

It's happening!

Living Life on the Edge

I just cut my hair. Myself. With kitchen scissors. In my bathroom at 11:00 on a Sunday night.

That just happened.

Dear World

I AM AN AUNT.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part I

The annoying thing about life is that it's impossible to do perfectly.

As much as I would like to be able to, I can't. And sometimes, Life throws you a curveball just to drive that home.

When I graduated earlier this year, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I'd kind of decided to move to Korea to teach English, and so I hadn't worried about doing silly things like taking the GRE or filling out a FAFSA. Well, Korea didn't pan out, much to my disappointment, and so I spent the summer pretty much lollygagging around until I finally got my act together and found a job. Then I got a second job because the first job was only half time. I vaguely figured I'd work for a year, pay down some of my student loan debt and regain my sanity, then plunge back into school the next fall.

It was a good plan. Okay, at least it wasn't a bad plan.

The only problem was, I forgot that grad school is not something you decide to do and just do in the spur of the moment. You have to plan ahead, waaaaay ahead, and do silly things like take the GRE and fill out a bunch of applications and ask a lot of people to write letters of recommendation and fill out the FAFSA. By the time I realized, Crap, I have to take the GRE and start looking at schools stat if I want to go to grad school in the fall! it was already early October. But the whole thought of that (and all the money it would require) was so overwhelming I procrastinated dealing with it. Finally, in early November I bit the bullet and went for it...but many of the places I was looking at had application deadlines on 1 December or in the middle of the month. If I wanted to even have a shot at applying to them I'd have to have my GRE results in to them by then, which means I'd have to take it in the middle of November at the latest. So I registered, paid my money (watching $175 go out of my bank account just for the pleasure of taking a test hurt a little bit), and took the test on 15 November at 8:00 in the morning.

I spent the lion's share of what little prep time I invested reviewing math concepts I was supposed to have mastered in middle school and the first couple years of high school. I'm sure this will not come as a shock to any who know me, but my mastery of math concepts basically stops at multiplication...if that. My grasp of even basic math was pretty rusty at best. I was not terribly worried about the vocabulary sections, since I knew about 90% of the words on the vocab lists in the prep book I borrowed from the library. (Let's face it, with my parents and my bookworm childhood, I'd be worried if I didn't.) Likewise, I was pretty confident about the analytic writing portion; if I managed to procrastinate every single paper I'd ever written at USU (some pretty spectacularly) and still not lose any points, I figured a half-hour to write one one-page essay was not going to be terribly taxing.

What's that scripture again? "Pride goeth before the fall"? (More accurately, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But it still applies.)

The morning of the GRE I wasn't feeling too bad about life. Nervous, but confident. I'd said my prayers, and I figured any Asian Studies program probably wasn't going to look too closely at my math score anyway so I'd be okay. The analytical writing section came first, and I felt like I did a good job on the two essay prompts I'd been given. I asked the Lord for the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit and for His help in doing my best, and I felt like I'd received it. I moved into my first math section feeling confident. (I didn't end it feeling confident, but that's a whole 'nother ball game.) The rest of the GRE went pretty quickly, especially the verbal sections -- I finished those with almost half the time to spare. The new computerized version of the GRE tells you your raw scores for the math and verbal sections as soon as you're done taking the test, so I knew I'd done okay with a 163 in verbal and a 154 in quantitative. I left feeling pretty upbeat, which was only confirmed when I looked up the table that converts your raw score into the percentile score grads schools use for admissions. I was 91st percentile in verbal and 60th in math, definitely good enough to satisfy admissions requirements. I was sure that when I got my writing scores I'd get a 5.0 or a 5.5 (out of 6.0) and be fine.

I realize that sounds incredibly cocky, but nothing in my education to that point had ever given me reason to disabuse myself of that notion, so you can imagine my utter shock when I opened my official scores Sunday morning to see a glaring "4.0 -- 49th %ile" staring back at me. I've never been hit with a 2x4 before, but I imagine the feeling of stunned bewilderment and disorientation is somewhat similar to how I felt at that moment. In case your math is as bad as mine, the 49th percentile is 21 percentage points shy of the 70 I needed to be admitted to the program I was most seriously considering, the Asian Studies MA at the University of Utah. The 49th percentile is average. Average. I went down to my room and sobbed.

The thing is, I realize that I'm being compared to other takers of the GRE, who are on average a smarter  bunch of people (or at least better test-takers) than your average US citizen. I know that, I do. Yet I find it utterly incomprehensible that my math score could be higher than my writing score, ever. Maybe back when I was two and learning to count but couldn't read yet. Definitely not now, not after not taking any math class for more than two years and not having a "real" math class since my second semester at UTM taking college algebra (and I got a B, by the way) more than six years ago. I felt like calling up ETS then and there and demanding to know how the heck this had happened. But I'm a chicken so I didn't. Now I'm desperately scrambling to find a way to fix this and I feel like my life has just been knocked into a flat spin. This post, however, is getting long, so I'll talk more about that in my next post.

Just FYI

In case you were wondering, if you're "smart" enough to wrap your chicken breasts in saranwrap before you freeze them, in an effort to save time so you won't have to unstick them when you want to use them, you will spend approximately 20 minutes trying to pry saranwrap out from in between the parts of the chicken that have been frozen together. You know, just a helpful life hint.

My New Place

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was my very first "grown-up job" payday, and it was also the day I moved into my new place (made possible by my first grown-up job payday). So come on in, and I'll give you a little tour of my place, all from the door of my room (please excuse the mess, and be careful on the stairs).

My room is in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs. Those stairs, to be precise. ~gestures to the picture below~ Those stairs lead from the side door. If you come straight down you enter my room; if you turn left on the landing and take two steps up, you're in the upstairs kitchen.

I say upstairs kitchen because there's also a downstairs one. The picture below on the left is the view from my door, facing out and left. There's also a table to the right, but it's blocked by the wall in this shot. To the left of the kitchen is the downstairs bathroom. Further to the left down a very short hall is the downstairs living room, and just off of that is a large bedroom shared by two of my roommates, Taylor and Megan (who are cousins). If you stand at my door and look out and right, you see the laundry / storage room.

This view below on the left is standing at my door looking to the left. The one on the right is standing at my door and looking straight ahead. The wall color doesn't look quite right, but it's a kind of dusky dark pink, with more purple than red in it. The other three walls are white painted paneling.

Here's the view from just inside my door toward the far left wall. That the wall my window and my bed are on. I've rearranged the furniture a little, and now the desk is against the same wall as the headboard, right up next to my bed. I'm typing this sitting at the head of my bed with my computer sitting on the desk. I'm going to pause just to complain a little bit about sleeping on a twin bed again. I sure do miss my lovely queen from my other house. ~heaves a heavy sigh~

And here's the view from the foot of my bed, looking back toward the door.

 So, really nothing too spectacular (and not nearly as nice as my last place - but cheaper!), but I'm hoping when I get everything unpacked and put away and organized and hopefully get all my art hung it will feel more like home. I have to admit that I felt a little lonely and sad last night. Jordanne and her family were very good to me and I'm going to miss them. Still, one has to be independent eventually, right?

When I get more settled in, I'll take some more pictures and show you how things look in that configuration. In the meantime, I'm excited that my mom will be coming into town this week and will be staying for my birthday!

First Day of Work

This is my new office. I suppose that's a bit of a misnomer, since it implies that there's an "old" office, when in fact this is the first office I've ever had. A bit of a thrill went through me when I reported for work this afternoon at one PM and heard, "You have your own office over here." I almost feel like a real grown-up!

To back track just a bit -- Obviously, the kick in the pants I got last week, combined with my computer biting the proverbial dust, did the trick. A good friend told me about this position, but I was initially reluctant to apply because it's not full-time, but half-time instead. I was wanting a full-time position for several reasons, but one of the most pressing was my upcoming 26th birthday (a month from today! crazy!). Turning 26 means I can no longer be on my parents' insurance, and gaps in insurance coverage can cause problems down the line. But when you're starving, metaphorically speaking, you can't afford to quibble with the available food not being 100% organic health food -- you've got to take what you can get. Plus, I knew they would seriously consider me because of my background and experience, and I wasn't getting a lot of consideration (*cough*or any *cough*) the other places I was applying. So I applied, and I interviewed last Thursday, and just a few hours after my interview they called me up and offered me the job and told me to come in Monday.

Here's the skinny on my current place of employment. I work for the Intensive English Language Institute at USU. The name is pretty self-explanatory -- it's a place where people come to learn English. Intensively. It serves mostly international students, but there are a few students who are US residents, mostly immigrants and refugees. My job is to do the "grunt work": filing, answering email inquiries, spending time on the telephone with insurance companies trying to straighten things out for students, copying, compiling orientation packets, scheduling catering for some events, etc. I work half-time, so basically I show up after lunch and close up the office at 5pm. Sadly, I only get three days off for Christmas (which I admit I'm a little puzzled about, since there are no students around).

Since there is currently a workshop going on that is being run by our faculty, I haven't really met anyone besides the IELI adviser, the IELI director, and one or two faculty. Oh, and the IT guys who came to help me get my computer set up. The only real work-y thing I did today was answer a phone while everyone else was out. I'm not yet in the system and I'm still fairly clueless about everything, so I spent the day reading the orientation packet and figuring how to get my (Windows 7 - ugh!) computer to let me type in Korean. I'm excited for the semester to start and for the students to get here, because I love students. And because presumably I'll know a little more about what's going on and be more comfortable in the office and know more people. I'm really excited about this job, even if I am doing "grunt work", because I feel so passionately about IELI's mission to help international students learn English and have a wonderful experience at USU and in America. I'm also hoping to be able to keep working my old job at the high school, since it's only in the morning and this job is only in the afternoon. That way I'd be working 35 hours a week, almost full time, which would keep me busy and stop me from sleeping too late in the mornings. We'll have to see how that works out, though.

Happy Quarter-Century to Me!

25 years ago today, at this very hour (1230), I was just over six hours old.

In that 25 years, a lot has happened. 25 years. It's a whole quarter of a century.

The last year of my life has been quite the upheaval. I decided that I wasn't happy where I was (academically speaking). I dropped out of school. I changed my life goals. I nannied for a semester. I moved 2/3 of the way across the country. I made new friends, settled into a new educational atmosphere, took care of my grandparents, adjusted to a different culture, lost both grandfathers, made life decisions impacting my immediate (and possibly long-term) future. I've smiled, cried, laughed, shouted, slept and dreamed and made mistakes. I've grown. Perhaps not as much as I should have, or could have, but I know that I'm a better person today than I was one year ago, and that's something.

Here's hoping the next year is better than the last.

News Bites

The irony of it snowing on the first day of spring break is not lost on me.

Really, I have nothing much to do for spring break. Lots of homework and papers I could do, and I do have tentative plans that include catching up on a lot of reading, but nothing really relaxing or fun. Well, sleeping in in the morning and not having to wake up to an alarm every morning. And my cousin's wedding is Wednesday, which should be a good time to get to see members of the extended family I haven't seen yet, including my other cousin's husband. And my other cousin's wife and daughter. And then on Saturday there's another family get together, this time for a younger cousin's baptism. She came over with her family last night and she adores me. I'm now her new favorite person, except she thinks I'm lame for not having Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus on my iPod. She's eight, by the way.

There's really not much to say about life right now. Other than I just ordered a straightening iron for my hair (a good one). I figured it's time to grow up and learn how to do something with my hair, as much as I don't like the thought of that. But now that I have bangs, it's pretty frustrating not to have one, since they always curl up and out in the most annoying an unflattering fashion.

AnnMarie...

...now has a bona fide brother-in-law.

*ponders this*

Weird.

Welcome Back, AnnMarie!

Today is my first Saturday as a college student in over two years. I can hardly believe it! I'm so excited to be back. I'm even almost excited to be swamped with homework this weekend, too. (Almost.) It is weird not being in class with the people I know, though. In that way, it's kind of like being a freshman all over again, but it's nice that I get to see my friends at all. My friends who went on missions from the Naval Academy came back to most of the people they knew being gone altogether. So I'll count my blessings and be glad that I get to see so many of my friends again.

Move-in was Tuesday. Boy! It took me five trips to get everything from the apartment I was staying in to my new dorm room, and I had to haul everything up two flights of very steep stairs to boot. Thankfully, on the fourth trip (that was my very heavy suitcases) a girl sitting on a bench at the top of the hill saw me and came running down the walk to ask if she could help me. She then proceeded to haul my suitcase all the up the hill, to my dorm, and then to my actual room -- and she did it in two-inch heels. I was very impressed, and very thankful, too. Her name was Lydia, and she's a sophomore, so maybe I'll see her again. In any case, I hope something very nice happens to her this week.

a blurry shot of my dorm room

Our first class of the year is always seminar, our history/philosophy/literature class. This year, being a sophomore, I started with Genesis 1-11. It was an interesting class discussion; we spent most of the time hung up on what it means to be naked, and why Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit and then hide themselves because they were naked. We didn't even get to talk about Noah and the flood at all, or even the Tower of Babel. The whole time, I was so grateful for the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and for the fact that I didn't have to worry about not having the answers to these questions. Because of restored truth, I don't have to worry about the seeming contradictions in the creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. I don't have to worry that (supposedly) God seems to be different in those chapters, or wonder why the snake was even talking to Eve in the first place. I know what it means that Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God. I know that the Fall wasn't an accident, but a necessary piece of a larger plan, created so that we can return to our Heavenly Father and become like Him, and live with our families forever (see this website for a more complete explanation). And I'm grateful for my experience as a missionary, because it gave me the patience and the perspective I needed to make it through that discussion without becoming discouraged or getting angry. Ah, the Lord really does know what He's about, and He prepares us for the trials we will face in our lives.

Next time: Why Greek and I don't get along so well after two intervening years studying Korean.