Training Log Archive: barb

Event: US Sprint & UltraLong champs
 

Out to Arlington Center and back for a meeting in the morning.

I'm coming down with a cold. I've been pounding the echinacea.
David ran his first cross-country race today, and did just fine. He beat his friend Reid Shea who hasn't been running as long (only since last week instead of a few weeks ago), but has longer legs. David was in a pretty good mood all evening, and got his homework done with no problem. Nice.

I stayed up late making two batches of chili for a company party tomorrow at which I am also putting on some "bioinforienteering" contest. So I have to make that up tomorrow. I made Bill's green chili with pork, and a vegetarian chili with lots of different veggies and 3 kinds of beans. They both have heirloom tomatoes from the garden.

Something is wrong with me. I cried for 2 hours last night, triggered by an interaction with a dean about David having some logistical / emotional problems with getting around Cambridge to and from his cross country, and fed perhaps (i'm guessing here) by guilt at not supporting David better, but confusion about how much I'm supposed to do for him, and annoyance that I don't think of what is perhaps obvious in terms of teaching him what he needs to do for himself now, and maybe a realization that he's growing up and taking a step out of the nest, and fear from the 2 hours when we didn't know where he was and had no way to contact him, and PMS, and my general weepiness that has been developing as I age, and then reading Little Lord Fauntleroy as a sort of escape. And may I say, thank you, Francis H Burnett, for giving us this little boy who is not broken, not even scarred, through the whole entire book. What a relief. Though a bit Chauncy Gardener.
Still feeling a little weepy this morning. Weird.

Over to a different school; making my first inroads there; met with a 5th grade teacher and we're planning one orienteering activity per month for the rest of the year. (!) Culminating in a trip to the Fells in the spring.

There's a one-woman show, "Truth Values", playing in Central Square through this weekend. I think it's about this woman's experience getting her PhD in Math at MIT around the time I was floundering around doing something similar there. The performer, Gioia, is staying with us. We're going to see it this weekend. People think it's really good, and I'm looking forward to it!

School:
The 1st & 2nd graders, then the last group of 7th graders, for my lecture.

Decided to start my lectures this year with a joke. This woman starts getting really bad headaches, so she goes to the doctor. Doctor says, bad news, you've got brain cancer & 6 months to live. Unless you want to try this new experimental treatment: brain transplant. Woman says, yeah, OK, I'll do that. Doc says, you have two brains to choose from, one from an orienteer and the other from a track star. Woman says, OK, what's the difference? Doc says, well, the orienteer's brain costs $85,000 and the track star's brain costs $400,000. Whoa, says the woman, why so much less for the orienteer's brain? Doc says, well, it's used.

Not the greatest joke, especially given that there are kids who run track.

To school to deliver 3 lectures about orienteering, then work, then home.

Favorite quote of the day is from the Rude Pundit: "Irony is to the anti-health care protesters as calculus is to a gerbil."

Blue course at Pawtuckaway. David started out with me, and bailed to the road after 4 controls. I was all chuffed because I was finding the controls easily. But I couldn't find #7 and wandered around for quite a while. Then I gave up, not considering that maybe the control wasn't where it was supposed to be. I had a heck of a time getting back for some reason. Headed generally southwest but did not know where I was for a long ways. Weird.