July

July has been a busy month for me, but not so much in the social/fun categories. I've been working 50+ hour weeks all month. Crazy, but the pay check makes it hurt less. :)
Some of the fun things that've happened this month:

• Peachtree Roadrace and 4th of July at John and Kirsten's (Kara's friends)
• Antique Market with Kara, Artie, and John. (I got some awesome table candelabras for $5!)
• Mindy and Jeran came to visit. We went to the aquarium, where they were able to say "Ooh we saw some of those!", and Stone Mtn to hike up and also watch the laser show. We got very wet, sitting on the grass. We also had some great meals, including grilled pizza and quiche. 

• Atlanta Botanical Garden - Kara and I finally made it to the garden. We've been meaning to go for several months now, and it just barely happened.

• Olympic Opening Ceremonies party at Diana's house. Literally the only thing I've done with my church friends all month. Besides church. I love olympics. 
• Last Call Blues dancing. I really love this monthly fix of blues dancing. 

 Other than those things, my life has pretty much only been work, come home to make and eat dinner, and go to bed. It's very straightforward, which is nice. I would like to have a social life again, though. It adds spice to life.

Here's some more pictures from the Botanical Garden: 

P'tree Road Race

Yesterday, to celebrate the Land of the Free, I joined roughly 60,000 other people and ran 10K under the hot, Georgia sun.

Ok, it was actually only about 58,000 people, and it was mostly overcast until about mile 4 (although I have no idea what time that is on a normal clock). Still, it was an interesting way to spend the 4th of July. I've never participated in a race that big, and it was an Experience.

I didn't really want to get out of bed at 5:30 on my day off and wasn't really in the mood for running (oh also, I haven't gone running once since my last race, the ten-miler. Oops. Not good training. Again). Getting ready, etc, blah blah blah... It took a lot longer to get to the start line than we expected, so I didn't start with my assigned wave (D) but with wave G. Which I was actually good with, because I was nervous about starting with such a fast wave. There were something like 25 waves, and several thousand people in each wave. So crazy. 

I entertained myself for the first four miles by waving at people and watching the crowds of runners. I liked to try to get people to cheer for me specifically. It was nice and hot, but luckily for everyone, it had rained nicely the night before and cooled the city down. By mile five, I was just going into running zone mode. And trying to keep my pace up enough that I would finish under an hour. The sixth mile seemed very long, but that's mostly because they didn't have the mile marked, and it just went straight to the finish line. It got very hot once we finished at Piedmont Park. Lots of sweaty people and no air movement.

Overall, I am very pleased with both the experience and my performance. I met my sub-hour goal with a time of 58:01. I bet I would do better if I actually trained though.

Rope Mill Adventure Run

Today was an adventure. Literally. For the past two months or so, I've been signed up to be in this 10-mile trail run. Naturally, I haven't trained for it very well. This time my excuse is work, which I find to be an almost valid excuse. I have trained some, just not enough to be ready for ten miles of trail running.

I woke up early this morning and drove up to the town of Woodstock to Rope Mill Park, an area developed for mountain bikers and dirt bikers (although my co-worker Josh tells me you can't ride there much anymore because of all the runners). Checked into the race, noticed the sign that said transferring between the 10 mile and 4 mile races was not allowed on race day. (Dang it. I would be able to survive a four mile run.) Then I had a while to hang out, stretch, admire the park.

We started on a concrete path and ran on that for about half a mile, then continued on a gravel road, then a single-file dirt trail. It was kind of nice to be in a single file, because then I was running with people who I thought were about my pace, without the awkwardness of "Mind if I run with you?" As usual, I started at a moderate pace and went with that for a while before deciding that I would actually prefer to go a bit faster, so I passed and left that group. From then on, I would follow behind someone for a while, and eventually pass them. And got passed myself by randomly fast runners who were behind me. It was fun. Lots of up and downs, but never any huge hills. The trails were mostly clear of rocks and trip-able roots, which was really nice. Because we were running through the trees, it never got super hot. Here's a map of our course.

Gotta love switchbacks!

Around mile 3, we had the pleasure of crossing the river, which they told us was only knee-deep. I suppose if you kept to the shallowest part it would've been only knee-deep, but there was a large number of slow-moving people there, so I went off to the side and ended up wet to my waist. But I passed a bunch of people, so that was cool. Shortly thereafter the course routed us down onto a creek bed for a little ways. Not a dry creek bed, although I suppose if you were really trying you could make it through without getting additionally wet. I didn't try to do that, and passed a couple more people. Fun fun fun. Next we had to "scramble over boulders"...for about 20 feet. Again, passing people. I don't know why they stop running just when it gets fun.

Just a little further on was the shoe change drop. The ten-mile runners had the option of sending a spare pair of shoes and socks in a bag with volunteers to change into after finishing the water portion. I considered not stopping to change shoes, but the wetness and sand didn't seem pleasant for the next 7 miles. So that took somewhere between 3-5 minutes. A lot of the people I had passed on the fun parts passed me again.

After that, we were more spread out, and I was rarely with someone for very long. I thought running by myself I'd have difficulties pushing myself to run instead of walk, but it really wasn't bad. I did walk some, but never for very long (apparently Ms. Ryan's insistence on only allowing us to walk for ten steps at a time has stayed with me for the past ten years, although I went with the more reasonable "30 seconds" rule. By keeping walking times short, you don't lose your pace so much). This is when I really appreciated having my iPod and armband with me to run. I'm afraid I've gotten attached to having either music or talking as I run longer distances.

There were no mileage markers along the trail, so when I came up on the concrete path that we had started on, I was rather surprised - I'd expected at least another mile still. However, I was perfectly happy to merely run the half mile to the finish line. Couldn't make myself go very fast on that part, but no one passed me, either. Hooray, finish! Time 1:41. That's an average of ten-minute miles, but with the shoe change, it means I was running faster than that. That's a really great pace for me! I can't wait to do a trail half-marathon in November.

Homesick

It has been 154 days since I left Utah for Atlanta (or 5 months and 2 days) and I'm officially homesick. Previously, the longest I'd been away from home was...like, 2 months. Maybe. Probably more like a month and a half when I lived in Virginia. Don't get me wrong, Atlanta is great, and I'm enjoying life here, but it's just Not Home. Here are some things that I'm missing:

Family - I love my family tons, and I feel like I haven't seen them in forever! With the exception of Mindy and Jeran, because I actually see them tons more now, which is great. Dad did manage to stop by once on a twelve hour layover, which was good. I did get to visit Andrew and Lindsay and Riley in Pittsburgh, too. They're not Utah family though. So, special shout out to Mom and Alyna, both of whom I really really miss a lot! Extended family, too. (Lisa and Cameron, I miss you guys too, but you don't live in Utah. I'll come visit sometime though!)  

Friends - I'm getting lots of friends here, but that doesn't stop me from missing my friends in Logan and in Provo. Especially Erilyn Heintz, Sarah Hafen, April Atkin, and Mindy Pinson. Well, April is actually on her mission, so I wouldn't be able to see her anyway, but I still miss her. (Kalie, you're in Rexburg and I never saw you. We talk more now, but I can't wait to see you again!) 

Desert - I miss the open spaces and sparse beauty of Utah's deserts, especially the red rock areas. I enjoy having trees here, but they give a very uniform look to the landscape.  

Mountains - They're just so majestic and comforting to have near. Also, real hiking involves going up a mountain, not winding around some little trail next to a flat boring river or tiny little park.

Dry heat - It's hot here. Like, ridiculous - 95 degrees and it's only May. I think I might die this summer. The worst part is the humidity which makes the heat suffocating and makes you sweat about 7x more easily. I honestly don't know how people live in places even more hot and humid than this. 

Some aspects of my life at BYU - including my Landscape Management friends and professors, lots of people to go running with (that live nearby), BYU tree crew and all of the fun and chill-ness that implies, Spicy Thai restaurant, J-Dawgs, Jamba Juice, Zupa's, being able to just not go to classes if that's what I really wanted. 

And probably a bunch of other small things. Yep, I'm homesick. Even one of my coworkers noticed and commented on it. His advice was to go home as often as possible, even just for the weekend (yeah, because that works with a $500 plane ticket). I am planning on coming out for a good week and some odd days in August, so I just have to survive another 68 days. 

Fun Weekend at Mindy and Jeran's

So, this is rather lazy of me, but I liked Mindy's blog post so much, you can all just go read hers again. http://supona.blogspot.com/2012/05/fun-weekend-with-jessica.html
 It was a really fun weekend, and so worth the drive to get there and back. I love living so (relatively) close to them.

Life as Late

For the most part I feel like life is pretty boring, until I remember all the exciting little things that I've done. These little adventures happen almost exclusively on the weekends. Here's a few of the highlights:

Visiting Andrew, Lindsay, and Riley in Pittsburgh. April 6-8. This was the first time I've ever actually met nephew Riley, since skype doesn't really count. He's such a cute baby. Nice and chunky. I just love him. It was also really fun to hang out with Andrew and Lindsay, since I haven't seem them in roughly forever. We watched some tv shows, played a game or two, and explored some of Pittsburgh. Super fun times.

Looking out of the Cathedral, on the 30th floor or something really high like that.

I really like all the bridges in Pittsburgh. Bridges are cool.

University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning. Seriously cool building.

Playing in the fountain. Almost.

Georgia Tech Swing dance and Last Call Blues - I finally had the time, the information, and the guts to go dancing here in Atlanta. I'm usually really nervous the first time I go somewhere like this, especially by myself, but both times it turned out really fun. The Georgia Tech dance was pretty much all Lindy Hop swing, which I enjoy but haven't done much of in recent years. But it was there that I met Benjy, who told me about Last Call Blues. It was fun to come in as a new person and be taken completely at face value, without anyone knowing me already. That's a monthly event I'll probably be going to almost every month.

Les Miserables - This has got to be one of the highlights of my Atlanta experience so far. I LOVE this musical, the theater (the Fabulous Fox theater is beautiful and very unique), and I specifically loved this production of Les Mis. I've been to a lot of Les Mis productions, and this one blows them all out of the water. The vocals were all absolutely stunning, the orchestra was powerful, the staging awesome. Kara and I went with Lei and Dan on Wednesday and had seats quite near the front. I loved it so much I went back by myself on Saturday for the matinee, bought a ticket from someone on the street, and watched it again. It was great, but a different experience being in the nosebleed section.

It has a very Middle Eastern/Persian feel to the interior of the theater, which is very cool.

Avengers IMAX 3D - A small group from my ward went on opening day - not midnight opening night, but Friday night - to see the show in Atlantic Station. It was great. If you like action, superheroes, handsome men, or Scarlett Johansson, I highly recommend this movie. I can't wait to go see it again.

Krav maga self-defense class - on Saturday afternoon, Kara and I went to a self-defense class with Rachel (Kara's friend with lots of karate experience) to one of her gyms. It was awesome! If that gym weren't so far away, I'd be tempted to sign up for an entire class series. I still might. Krav maga was developed for the Israeli military and quickly gained popularity for civilian self-defense. It's a rather aggressive form of defense, where you avoid conflicts if you can, but if you have to fight, you're attacking to cause maximum damage. I feel much more dangerous now.

Something Like Spring Break

Since it's been about four years since I've had a spring break, this past weekend was a fun little experience for me. Some friends from church really wanted to go to Savannah or Charleston for the weekend and invited me. It ended up being me, Maurine, Christina, and Holly.

Maurine, Holly, me, Christina

SO MUCH FUN!

We drove down on Friday evening and came back Sunday afternoon. 

Some of the random fun things that added to this memory were: each of us brought a bunch of snacks to share - mostly sugar, I discovered Zaxby's for the first time (chicken fast food place, but very different from Chik-fil-A), a bunch of college kids also on spring break, a fire alarm going off at the hotel.

Saturday was packed with all sorts of goodness:

Going to the beach

 Flying kites

 Getting rained on

 Walking down River Street in Savannah

Exploring the candy stores 

 Eating at The Cotton Exchange (fried cheesecake!)

Walking around Forsyth Park

It was really pretty with the rain/mist and the Spanish moss hanging off the live oaks. I love this city.

Sunday we drove back after watching the morning session of conference at a nearby church building. Could a weekend get any better?