My Milestone

1500m in 55 minutes.

Terrible pace, I know.  I'm an awful swimmer who swims in however funky, inefficient manner I know, but I swim anyway because I enjoy it.  You have to understand I've never swum this far before, and I was still not out of breath.  I could've gone another 500 or perhaps another 1000m if I weren't so hungry.  No, I did not train specifically to swim 1500m, and I am convinced more than ever that variety in physical activity is a very good thing. :)

My Validation (Ahem)

If a scientist of such stature that he is professor at Stanford, member of the National Academy, Howard Hughes investigator and invitee to the Nobel Symposium tells you that you write very well, is the universe perhaps trying to tell you something? Hi hi.  I may not be the world's best biochemist, etc., but what I am is a damn good writer.  No one, no one can take that away from me.  *Grin.*

My Crashes

My bike, it appears, is cursed.

I have been biking to work for about a year and a half now, the last half on a new (cheap) bike.  Strangely, I crashed, through none of my fault, twice in the last month.  The first time, I for whatever reason lost all brakes that were fine moments earlier.  I was on a slight decline, and I deliberately crashed myself on the sidewalk to avoid flying past a busy intersection.  (Note to self: You can probably slow yourself down using shod feet as brakes.)  The second, which happened last week, was scarier: the front tire just blew out without provocation.  A piece of metal was stripped off the rim--it's crazy.  I had no idea a bike tire had enough pressure to actually cut metal.

I skinned knees both times, but the crashes have made me wary.  Not of biking in general, but of this bike in particular.  Skinned knees aren't too bad, but I don't think I want to find out what would happen on a third crash.  I think it will be walk-and-train until I can afford to buy a new, perhaps better quality bike; long story, but I'm broke at the moment.  It's winter anyway, and the weather has been alternately cool or freezing.  I only wish the sun would come out more often.

A (Very) First-World Problem

Last night, you found it cold enough to turn off the air conditioner, but not so cold as to require heat.  Since the apartment is centrally cooled and heated, you ask yourself if it will, somehow, continue to ventilate if you shut the system off.  You go to bed wondering if you will die of CO2 poisoning in your sleep.  You survive the night.

My Grub

I eat, therefore I am, and what I am not, or refuse to be, is a chemistry experiment.

In recent weeks, food labels have become my latest source of morbid fascination; the production of the modern factory food requires, it seems, a Ph.D.  Who knew polysorbate 80 was necessary to make beef jerky?  My grandmother used to just dry beef strips out in the sun.  Also, to go from yogurt that's awfully plain to yummily vanilla-flavored is to add nine(!) different ingredients.  I suffer each and every morning I eat plain, but at least I won't have to metabolize malic acid and potassium sorbate.  Does my body even appreciate the kinds of sacrifices I'm doing for its sake?  One can only hope.

I am not anally vegetarian, although I certainly can't remember the last time I had meat.  I used to count the number of days I went off meat, but I have long since given up.  If you must insist that I belong to a category, you will find me among wholefoodores, exotic species that eat the least-processed food available.  Indeed, when presented some time ago with a stark choice between a beef-barbecue sandwich and canned vegetable soup, I picked the sandwich, despite my earnest, on-going flirtation with vegetables.

Now, if I could only break my addiction to Coke Zero, that would be great.

----tear here----

A random experiment with a new point-and-shoot:

 
This is the Menil Collection, a small museum of modern art and other artifacts collected by some very rich folks.  It is, quite literally, in my backyard.

My Reads 0.5

I'm thirty-four, you know.  I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children.

--That has to be the best line ever uttered in literature, by the Lady Ashley, in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which, in this day and age, somehow still scandalized me.  And I promise to write more often.