Swimming upstream, or, Finding the current

Reflecting, for a brief moment, on the changes that have come my way in recent weeks.

• My wardrobe has been pared down to business dress.  And workout clothes.
• My schedule has been unpredictable and hectic.  I feel disorganized 99% of the time. (OK this is not different than usual.)
• I am smiling constantly.  A whole new range of body language has begun to express itself.
• I am starting to talk to myself.  Nicely.
• The shoes on my feet are for style and safety.  And have been bought in the last week.
• I see more of my husband.  And less (he is killing me in a weight-loss battle).
• I feel closer to (and farther away) from my fierce female friends.  Go Scripps!
• I hold my head up high.  People actually listen to the words coming out of my mouth.
• I haven't been for a run since moving to our new house in August.

Goldenseal: friend or foe?

Hydrastis canadensis

In periods of stress, a person could be written a prescription for the newest anti-anxiety medication (see prev post) or a person of botanical pursuasion such as myself may tend to look to Gaia (Mother Earth) for treatment.  My dear sister, who for the moment shall remain nameless, recommended to me a while back the tincture of Goldenseal root.

I looked at a small bottle of Goldenseal root extract in a store in Riverside and didn't buy any.  Or if I did buy it, I didn't take it and now it's lost.  I forgot why.  Recently while celebrating the Ph.D. defense of a good friend, who shall also remain nameless, we ran into a herbal store to see what kind of stress-mitigating substances they might be carrying.  With my first paycheck in the bank, I decided to splurge on the stuff I had been prescribed by my sister years ago.

Berberine 

Hydrastine

The "Supplement Facts" certify that 1 serving of this product (1 mL) contains a minimum of 5 mg Hydrastine and 10 mg Berberine, both isoquinoline alkaloids (can you spot the structural similarity?).  A single serving of this extract is said to have been prepared using 500 mg of plant root.

 The root is the active part of the plant, it is harvested in the autumn after the plant has died down and is dried for later use. It is said to be antiperiodic, antiseptic, astringent, cholagogue, diuretic, laxative, stomachic, tonic. It is used mainly in the treatment of disorders affecting the ears, eyes, throat, nose, stomach, intestines and vagina.  I am intrigued and have taken 3 doses so far.

1) Friday before a Red Eye flight to the East coast - in green tea - 1 mL ( too strong )
2) Sunday/Monday after whirlwind weekend trip - in green tea with milk/honey 0.5 mL (still too strong)
3) Tuesday afternoon - 0.5 mL in decaf coffee with milk/honey (EXCELLENT)

So I'll keep you up to date on my personal experiment.  It is recommended not to exceed 10 days of this treatment.  Hoping to cut carbs from my diet and banish anxiety.  Hit the RESET button on my metabolism.
Also note on previous post RE: vitamins, I think they accelerated some of my cavities.  When I entered graduate school I was accused of not being a serious chemist because I didn't have bad teeth.  The things we go through in the Ph. D. process to prove we are serious...

file > new > blank document

So I have a week left until I need to start showing my face around the new campus.  I am not terrified, but for some reason I am having trouble with the transition.  My husband says from his perspective it's like I am "sitting down right before crossing the finish line."  I've never done that in a race, so why am I doing it in real life?

I remember in the LA County Half, I was sooooo frustrated with myself for having to walk almost the entirety of Mile 10.  I knew I was closing in on the home stretch, but my legs simply wouldn't work.  I guess that's what this feels like.  After an incredibly productive week last week, I am sitting down right before the finish line.

my baby-doggie, Edna Jo

What's wrong?  I feel like there's soooo much to do, it's hard to start.  I am starting to feel grounded here at the new house.  Thank goodness.  After a year-and-a-half of feeling like the rug was snatched out from under me, because of living apart from my husband and baby-doggie, it didn't seem right.  So at least we're under one roof again and I think that is definitely helping me find my center.

Everything is working out as well or better than we had hoped.  Yet, I can't seem to find the motivation to finish the dissertation.  Spending 8+ hours per day in front of a screen, watching the blinking cursor, combing through notes and files accumulated over 5+ years of study, trying to synthesize all this knowledge into a coherent summary with references, it is maddening!  It's so much easier to turn my energy towards a task that can be completed in an afternoon, or even a week.  This project (the dissertation) you could say has spanned 5 years, focusing on the write-it-up part for the past 6 months.

So with that I will conclude with a quote I found on twitter:
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." ~Mario Andretti

Dorkin' Out with Team Garmin-Cervelo

Forerunner 110

So I have a bit of a crush on Thor Hushvod and I am happy to finally have given myself a moment to blog about it.  Watching Le Tour this year has been inspiring me to "take the high road" i.e. do some climbing on my morning commute.  It also encouraged me to set goals and develop a winning team, so I was stoked when team Garmin-Cervelo won the team competition in Le Tour.  At my bicycle club Winter Holiday Party last year, we did a white elephant gift exchange and I got a DVD called Beyond the Peloton.  That's how I got the crush.

Anyway, I got a Garmin Forerunner 110 as a gift from my husband last month and so far it is pretty cool.  I can easily see the route if I upload the data to MapMyRide, which I had been doing before manually and sometimes it would take quite a bit of time to remember where I had gone.  The Garmin works for both running and biking (that I have tested) but all my workouts seem to upload with a "run" default setting and I have not yet figured out how to change that.  Other than that it beeps at me at each mile.  That's kind of encouraging.  I track my workouts under the username fb.KayK.679.  Then I can see if I'm overtraining in one area or another (biking/running/aerobics).  Also I can track my weight and mood and how that corresponds to what I've been doing.  At least that's what I use it for.  I used to post my workout stats to a Leaderboard with another club member, to compare things like distance, calories, pace and weight, which was also pretty motivating.  Supposedly you can swim with the Forerunner 110 too, as long as you don't dive.

So should I retire the Nike+ device (see prev posts RE: elation, frustration, realization, and commiseration)...  Well the watch/USB fob logged 89 miles, the shoes have 231 miles.  So it worked about 38% of the time, give or take my accuracy in uploading workouts manually.  The Nike+ system seems in retrospect more geared to Apple users and I am not one of those.  No iTunes for me, but for those who do, it has the potential to coordinate your playlist with your run.  So I guess I may give in to my Garmin.  Especially since the Nike+ was not compatible with cycling.  MapMyFitness has all kinds of features besides cycling, so overall I am happy with that platform, even though most of my profile is cycling-related and I access it through MapMyRide.  I know they have a good iPhone app, but I use my Sanyo SCP-2700, which is just as good for me.  Speaking of triathlons, I dropped my phone in the jacuzzi in La Jolla, took it apart, let it dry out for 3 days, put it back together and it is still working fine.  The Nike+ wristband has been a handy watch even when it didn't work for uploading run data.  I don't think I'll trash it just yet.

While I'm doing a technology review, [ahem, avoiding writing my dissertation] I might as well tell you about my Shell Eee PC. "Easy to learn, easy to work, easy to play" (Eee) is the company motto and I think they did a good job.  I've had it since before I went overseas (over a year).  It has been my video phone for Skype (low-cost international) calling and videoconferencing.  I've written my dissertation on it, thanks to a large hard drive (250GB).  I am addicted to multitasking and the Intel Atom processor has yet to overheat like my previous Tablet PC.  Which my dad and I tried to fix like this, and then had to take it in for service to get a new mother board put in.  I installed Google chrome for browsing and use pretty much the entire Google suite of cloud computing solutions.  And just now, I had forgotten to save the entire above writing and it restored itself.  It weighs less than 4 pounds with AC adapter and I can take it everywhere on my bike.  Obviously I use it to track my wellness activities.  Also I use it to back up photos taken with my phone.  All this technology supported my husband and I while living apart for the past year and a half.  I tagged this post "green" because the Eee PC's annual electrical consumption is less than $3.

I tagged this post "weight loss" because I am back in a size 8 for wedding season.  Hurrah!

A liberated woman!

GREEN STATS from MAPMYRIDE.com Since 02/18/2009
Total Workout Days: 496 
Distance Traveled: 4,547.33 mi.
Gas Saved: 252.63 gallons 
Money Saved: $879.15 
Carbon Offset: 4,890.9 lbs. of CO2
Total Burned: 203,916 (kcal)


My bicycle liberates me from a dependence on gasoline.  My bicycle liberates me from excess body fat.  My bicycle liberates me from sitting in traffic jams.  My bicycle liberates me from anxiety and depression, bringing me closer to my friends and relatives.  The bicycle liberated women from having to wear 35 pounds of heavy dress (as was common prior to 1890s, before the golden age of cycling, around the time of the founding of my bicycle club). 

Viva Le Tour de France!

Crossroads

You know how sometimes a concept gets stuck in your head and you can't shake it and you don't know why or how it got there?  It's times like those when I put pen to paper (so to speak) or in this case fingers to keyboard.  If I can't flush out the meaning by exploring my own thoughts, then there's no hope for me as a writer.

So the theme of a crossroads keeps popping into my head.  In the context of life, research, birthdays... thinking about each aspect of my life seems to land me at a crossroads.  Got me thinking about the blues, i.e. Robert Johnson, selling my soul to the devil for a mess of talent in one specific medium (guitar or chromatography or writing for example).  Let's say this is the dark side of being at a crossroads, being somewhere mystical (between worlds).  Desperation, confusion and danger seem to previal in this concept of a crossroads.  Criminals and those who took their own lives were traditionally buried at crossroads.  I wonder if there is any astrological significance to this day or week...

I was also thinking about crossroads in terms of travels, knowledge and ideas.  Certain places become wealthy of thought by being geographically positioned at a crossroads.  Different cultures encounter each other and exchange of wisdom is mutually beneficial.  The same could be said for academia and our IGERT training program being a crossroads between traditional disciplines.  This seems to be a rosy view of the meaning of a crossroads.

Finally we come to discuss my birthday.  Finding onesself "at a crossroads" implies that one is literally in crisis.  A crossroads is a turning point, with an unpredictible outcome.  Personal crisis occurs when events trigger extreme tension and stress within an individual which require major decisions or actions to resolve.  Crisis can also mean "a testing time" or "emergency event."  I would say the culmination of my life's educational phase and entry into professional work is such a type of crisis.  Not to mention preparing to defend my dissertation, which is a battle of its own.  Becoming truly an adult, potentially a mother, and owning up to my new status in society... I am at these crossroads.

There's also somewhere in my psyche poems by Robert Frost and the ethos of the Cowboy Way in contrast with Kit McCallum where the twentieth century message of choosing to take the "high road" is updated to something more like "choose the best road for you or make your own road" rather than bending to society's pressures regarding which road is the best.  I'm not sure how to choose where to go from here, to be honest.  I guess I need to slow down and keep setting aside time for myself to think and process everything that is going on in my life right now.

The crossroads is represented visually by the christian cross and the mandala, which are useful in meditation practice for focusing attention and according to Carl Jung help the artist work towards wholeness in personality.  My dear roommate has encouraged me to draw lately.  Perhaps the mandala is the way to go.

Busy Bee

June has been very busy so far and it's not going to get any less so.  I remember what I was told about 10 years ago at the UNK Gold Torch Mentoring Weekend, "you can have it all but not all at once."  Seems like as the health comes and goes, so does the intimacy in a marriage/friendship, and the financial security/stability provided by a job/career. At least for one moment you may have it all. The Gold Torch society's motto is  “To be born a girl is a gift we were given. To become a woman of wisdom and courage is a gift we give the world.”  This picture reminds me of our family's strength in numbers and how we support each other in large and small ways.

As I make progress towards wrapping up here at UCR and get prepared to head into full-time teaching, I am reflecting on great mentors I've had over the years and the wonderful people who I have had the privilege to mentor along the way.  I have a quote running through my head and I hope I can find it.  Meanwhile a few gems from the archives:

 "Do you know why they call it 'PMS'? Because 'Mad Cow Disease' was taken."
--Unknown, presumed deceased

"It's not normal for a woman to read! Soon she starts getting *ideas*, and *thinking*..."
-- Gaston, Beauty & the Beast, Disney

"Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good."
--Charlotte Whitton

"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
--Linda Ellerbee

"God gave women intuition and femininity.
Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met."
--Farrah Fawcett

"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed.
If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.'
They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.' "
--Clare Boothe Luce