Training Log Archive: barbIn the 7 days ending Dec 9, 2006:
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Thursday Dec 7, 2006 #
Running 12:00 [1]
Work commute
Wednesday Dec 6, 2006 #
Bicycling 8:00 [1]
Work commute. Didn't find time to run today. Had a nice evening with the kids, though. We had a rubber-band-shooting fight until Isabel took one in the eye, and later watched most of "Reduced Shakespeare Company" where they claim to present all of Shakespeare's works in 90 minutes. The kids loved it.
Tuesday Dec 5, 2006 #
Running 1:00:00 [2]
Back to Olden Road, then along the creek a ways.
Monday Dec 4, 2006 #
Running 35:00 [2] 3.2 mi (10:56 / mi)
A trip down memory lane...
I woke up at 4 am, took a plane to DCA. Missed the first snow of the season :-( :-( which I had been looking forward to sharing with the kids for weeks now. There will be other snows. I heard that Isabel went to school with a wig and different clothes & backpack, to play a trick on her classmates, "like you, Mom", but it didn't work out. I heard that David woke up cranky and was upset all morning (until he left for school), slamming doors and complaining. Maybe he missed me.
I spent the day at the board meeting for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. In the morning several NIH Institute Directors spoke to us about funding for biomedical research and so on, and then in the afternoon we heard from Chairmon Barton (R-Tex), who authored/championed the NIH reauthorization bill that with any luck will pass the Senate unanimously tomorrow (apparently it has to pass unanimously or else it doesn't count). It was interesting to hear his views of what NIH needs to change as opposed to the Directors' views ([1] we're already doing that, and [2] doing it "officially" would create more bureacracy) ("it" = more cooperation between Institutes). We cast straw votes on our federal research funding recommendations. I always eat a lot at these things, because they have food lying around. Today I decided to skip dinner. But I ate dinner after all, and decided that I'm in eating-a-lot mode at this time - after all, I want to fit in with the F45 club that I'll be joining on 1/1/07, and it seems that eating is a thing the girls are into right now. I had some wine too, and talked to fellow board members about orienteering (natch), living in Uppsula (guy to my left), modeling coagulation in the blood with complex dynamical systems equations, and so on. Then the dessert speaker, the President of the AAMC, talked, and I was psyched to hear him say that we can't just advocate for more funding for biomedical research (which careful, reputable FASEB does very well), but we need to go beyond and change the conversation back to values. It's become too much about interests, everyone getting their own. And we need to talk about some social values... Which of course I liked to hear but didn't get exactly how I'm supposed to voice when we're in meetings with congressional staffers. I asked, and when I ask stuff like this, you can hear how frustrated I am at not getting it, and I got ribbed afterward for being hard on the guy, but I just really want to know how I can effectively use this little perch to ask for some degree of sanity and doing-the-right-thingness.
I went for a jog before dinner. We're in Rockville, and I lived in Rockville exactly 20 years ago, not far from this hotel. I went onto google maps to figure out where I'd lived, and I couldn't remember the address, south of the White Flint Mall I thought, and definitely north of the beltway. Didn't find anything looking familiar, so I went into hybrid aerial photo / map mode, and moved about until I recognized some street names, faint ghosts in my mind, like Trivial Pursuit guesses. Boiling Brook, Rocking Horse... Olden Road, that was it. I jogged to Olden Road, trying to relax my mind and let old memories in. On the street I remembered, 4701 was our house. I went to the park at the end of the road to OK relieve myself (aging thing), and was startled by a couple of deer. I lived on Olden Road for a year, with my fiance, working in Virginia and taking graduate courses at U Md, and studying the beats, Kerouac and Ginsburg and Gregory Corso, until I realized that things weren't working out and moved back to the warm womb of MIT.
It was cold out, winter cold. The jogging felt easy. As I neared the turn onto Rocking Horse Lane, I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of longing and loss, some memory too buried to resurrect images, just the feeling. I thought, I am acknowledging the sweetness of that brief domestic life, with takeout Chinese and cozy cheap wine - ah, but the alcohol was a problem in the end.
I woke up at 4 am, took a plane to DCA. Missed the first snow of the season :-( :-( which I had been looking forward to sharing with the kids for weeks now. There will be other snows. I heard that Isabel went to school with a wig and different clothes & backpack, to play a trick on her classmates, "like you, Mom", but it didn't work out. I heard that David woke up cranky and was upset all morning (until he left for school), slamming doors and complaining. Maybe he missed me.
I spent the day at the board meeting for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. In the morning several NIH Institute Directors spoke to us about funding for biomedical research and so on, and then in the afternoon we heard from Chairmon Barton (R-Tex), who authored/championed the NIH reauthorization bill that with any luck will pass the Senate unanimously tomorrow (apparently it has to pass unanimously or else it doesn't count). It was interesting to hear his views of what NIH needs to change as opposed to the Directors' views ([1] we're already doing that, and [2] doing it "officially" would create more bureacracy) ("it" = more cooperation between Institutes). We cast straw votes on our federal research funding recommendations. I always eat a lot at these things, because they have food lying around. Today I decided to skip dinner. But I ate dinner after all, and decided that I'm in eating-a-lot mode at this time - after all, I want to fit in with the F45 club that I'll be joining on 1/1/07, and it seems that eating is a thing the girls are into right now. I had some wine too, and talked to fellow board members about orienteering (natch), living in Uppsula (guy to my left), modeling coagulation in the blood with complex dynamical systems equations, and so on. Then the dessert speaker, the President of the AAMC, talked, and I was psyched to hear him say that we can't just advocate for more funding for biomedical research (which careful, reputable FASEB does very well), but we need to go beyond and change the conversation back to values. It's become too much about interests, everyone getting their own. And we need to talk about some social values... Which of course I liked to hear but didn't get exactly how I'm supposed to voice when we're in meetings with congressional staffers. I asked, and when I ask stuff like this, you can hear how frustrated I am at not getting it, and I got ribbed afterward for being hard on the guy, but I just really want to know how I can effectively use this little perch to ask for some degree of sanity and doing-the-right-thingness.
I went for a jog before dinner. We're in Rockville, and I lived in Rockville exactly 20 years ago, not far from this hotel. I went onto google maps to figure out where I'd lived, and I couldn't remember the address, south of the White Flint Mall I thought, and definitely north of the beltway. Didn't find anything looking familiar, so I went into hybrid aerial photo / map mode, and moved about until I recognized some street names, faint ghosts in my mind, like Trivial Pursuit guesses. Boiling Brook, Rocking Horse... Olden Road, that was it. I jogged to Olden Road, trying to relax my mind and let old memories in. On the street I remembered, 4701 was our house. I went to the park at the end of the road to OK relieve myself (aging thing), and was startled by a couple of deer. I lived on Olden Road for a year, with my fiance, working in Virginia and taking graduate courses at U Md, and studying the beats, Kerouac and Ginsburg and Gregory Corso, until I realized that things weren't working out and moved back to the warm womb of MIT.
It was cold out, winter cold. The jogging felt easy. As I neared the turn onto Rocking Horse Lane, I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of longing and loss, some memory too buried to resurrect images, just the feeling. I thought, I am acknowledging the sweetness of that brief domestic life, with takeout Chinese and cozy cheap wine - ah, but the alcohol was a problem in the end.
Sunday Dec 3, 2006 #
Note
Yesterday my son David told me that one of the college kids helping out with his class at school knows about orienteering and has done it.
I asked him how the topic of orienteering had even come up. I thought it a good sign that David was talking about orienteering. Perhaps they had been talking about hobbies that they each enjoy?
Turns out it came up in a discussion about famous people.
David asked her, "Have you heard of Samantha Saeger or Ross Smith?" That's how the orienteering conversation started.
:-)
I asked him how the topic of orienteering had even come up. I thought it a good sign that David was talking about orienteering. Perhaps they had been talking about hobbies that they each enjoy?
Turns out it came up in a discussion about famous people.
David asked her, "Have you heard of Samantha Saeger or Ross Smith?" That's how the orienteering conversation started.
:-)
Bicycling 40:00 [3]
Forgot to bring the soloist practice CDs we'd copied to opera rehearsal. So I drove back home, and then biked back.
This is a time of humiliation. I can't sing well, but I'm in this opera. I am slow at orienteering, but I'm in training to try and kick butt in a rogaine. When I run or bike, people around me are going faster. All my computational biology colleagues at work were laid off, and I was put into Clinical, where I don't understand most of what happens around me. And my brain is failing more than ever, resulting in a steady flow of small embarrassments. Etc. I figure it's good mental training somehow.
This is a time of humiliation. I can't sing well, but I'm in this opera. I am slow at orienteering, but I'm in training to try and kick butt in a rogaine. When I run or bike, people around me are going faster. All my computational biology colleagues at work were laid off, and I was put into Clinical, where I don't understand most of what happens around me. And my brain is failing more than ever, resulting in a steady flow of small embarrassments. Etc. I figure it's good mental training somehow.