AY!

You, my friend, are looking at (through) the butt of my suit.
Let's just say I had a hunch that my suit (which has gone through 400+ miles of water, lots of running, weights, and dryland exercises.) was going to rip somewhere soon. Little did I know that it would be today, a huge hole revealing my crack.
What more can I say?

Anyone?

Quick question: I'm trying to find my Jane Eyre movie, and I believe I loaned it out. Do you have it?

Blue collar girl in a white collar world.

I feel lost at college.

All I want to do is play with wood, metal, anything that I can build with. Not sit down in class everyday to discuss what some woman writer was trying to say in the 12th century. I don't want to learn about the reason why this president was regarded as awful, and that president was wonderful. Those are just historians writing down their biased opinion and view of history.

Give me some wood. Some machines. And I'll be so happy.

Should I really be going to a college that doesn't offer anything to do with your hands (except for the fine arts department)? What's the point if I only want to play with wood?

I'll even do landscaping! Just let me play with my hands and actually build something. I'll let the white collar people type on computers in cages all day and read and be smart.

They still need the blue collar studs.

Random Pictures from Arizona Trip Thus Far

A pretty view as we were attempting to find the other team's flag in a game of "capture the flag." Needless to say, the flag was captured only once in about an hour.

We climbed a lot of rocks and such...

Here's the people I swim with. Even when I make a nice face, I don't look so well...

I was trying to express the fact that Jen's feet were stinky. Didn't go so well.

More terrain we covered trying to find a silly flag!

To Breathe, or not to Breathe: that is the question:

While I'm training down here at Tempe, Arizona, we get to train in a 50 meter pool, instead of a 25 yard pool. The problem with this? My coach loves making us do breath control sets. 50 meters is just a little bit longer than 25 yards.
For part of a set yesterday, we had to put fins on, go halfway underwater, halfway butterfly. Rest for about 15 seconds, push off, and go ALL THE WAY underwater for 50 m. Then you have to climb out, take off your flippers, run to the dive tank, go off the high dive, sprint back in the water, climb out, run back to the pool, put your fins back on, and do it all over again. I made the first total underwater 50. After that, however, on the second 50 where we had to do it all underwater, after about 35 meters, my vision started blacking out. Here comes the question, and I have but a few seconds to decide...

To breathe, or not to breathe: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The dead brain cells due to lack of oxygen,
Or to take that breath against the wish of the Coach,
And by opposing to be punished? To die: to wheeze;
No more; and by a wheeze to say we begin
The heart-ache of thousands more yards to be swum.

Poor adaptation, I know. I have burned hundreds of brain cells over the past few months though. Give me some credit.

So by the time I thought this through, I could see absolutely nothing but darkness and panic. So I came up for a breath of fresh air.

I got kicked out. Had to come back in an hour to swim 2 miles. Whoopee.

The Risks of Shuffling

Instead of listening to songs in any logical order, I like to shuffle them on my ipod and listen to whatever may come next.
As I was driving in the dark, I realized that shuffling your songs is risky.

The Jolt: If you're listening to a slow and pensive song that ends with 10 or more seconds of almost complete silence, you're putting yourself at risk for "the jolt." It's inevitable that someday after one of those quiet songs, a loud note or intro of the next song will jolt you out of your seat!

The guilt-trip: My ipod automatically uploads everything from the itunes library on the family computer. So, once in a while a conference talk will come up. Now I'm on a guilt trip...I really want to skip it, but what if it came up for a reason? Maybe I'm supposed to listen to it....so I wait out the 15 minutes, so I won't have a guilty conscience.

The blush: Sometimes you have unplanned trips with your friend. The first thing they hear when you turn on the car is some crazy random song that you just love, but they look all queer, and express outloud, "you listen to Monty Python's Spamalot?!" Clay Aiken is worse, though. Or Evita. Or....

Those were the only ones that came to my mind. I think I'm going to think about this some more. Or you could just tell me some other risks.