Training for a Half: week 4

No you didn't miss all the other posts about the Half marathon I have signed up for. I've been bad at keeping the commitment to myself of blogging once a week. I think maybe it's the day/time I scheduled always got overtaken by other things. I first had it scheduled for Friday afternoon, when work was winding down and I was not likely to be interrupted, but then someone scheduled a meeting for that time. Then I tried putting it on Saturdays after I got back from Food Not Bombs, but by then I am so motivated to clean the house or do other chores that opening up my computer was the last thing I wanted to do. I'll work on finding the right time.

In our first year here (2014), I signed up for and ran a 5K race alongside the Salt Lake City Marathon. They continue to send reminder emails years later for past participants to sign up for something for the next race. When the reminder came in early January I decided now is the time, I'm finally going to do a half.

I did a 10-day juice fast over Christmas & the New Year and lost 6 pounds. I was lighter than I had been in more than 15 years, I decided I was ready to start training. I have a treadmill too, so I really have no excuse (such as weather) to not run.

I'm a big fan of health and fitness apps. I have a fitbit and check my fitbit app constantly to see where I am in relation to the people I am fitbit friends with. Back in December 2010 I discovered the newly released LoseIt! app and have been charting my ups and downs with that for more than five years now, it's so gratifying! I love my Nike+ Women's training app that combines dumbells and other equipment with cardio segments. When I signed up for this Half, I went to the "coach" section of my Nike+ running app, plugged in the date and length of the race I want to train for, and then 12 weeks of training plan was laid out before me.

The plan includes four days of running - two light (3 miles), two heavy (one longish run, one longer and longer run). It also includes one day of cross-training (so I use the aforementioned Nike+ training app) and two rest days. My main goal is to get through this training and race injury-free, so much the better if I can reach my goal weight while doing it.

A funny thing happens though when you are trying to reach a goal weight and then start an aggressive fitness program. The weight remains the same as you burn fat and start building muscle. I can't get discouraged by the number on the scale (but I sorta do) because the way my clothes hangs is totally different. I have to keep reminding myself that since moving to SLC just over two years ago, I have lost 35 pounds. That's no small feat! And now I am training for a race, a half marathon, something I have always wanted to do. Even if I never do it again, I will be pleased.

I am still juicing every day, sometimes twice a day. After doing that 10-day Reboot, I have a really hard time eating anything that has been fried, processed foods, or bread. It's been really interesting seeing how my body is adapting to this new regime in our house - Dan and I hardly eat meat anymore as we move to a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle. I am now one of those people who buys a 25-pound bag of carrots for juicing.

I digress. The race day is April 16, two weeks before I finish my second Master's degree, and a few weeks after my 42nd birthday. I'm looking forward to my training as it will give me time also to catch up on audio books and podcasts! 

free food giveaways: Food Not Bombs Salt Lake City

Sometime last month when I was volunteering with Green Urban Lunch Box, one of the volunteers told me about the food giveaway at a park near downtown SLC by Food Not Bombs.  I went that day (a Saturday) and have been going every weekend since (except for the weekend I was away).

The volunteers for the organization rescue perfectly good food that has gone past its expiry date from going into the dumpster. So much food is wasted in the United States, and this is a way of keeping it out of the landfill. They collect this food, and then three times a week they set up tables to just give away, no questions asked. Below are photos of some of the things I have brought home - all for free. 

The above photo was from this morning. Dan has the weekend off for Thanksgiving, so he came with me for the first time. There was a lot of food from the post-Thanksgiving feast and only half of the usual people showed up, so there was a lot to be given away. Above we have salad mix, bananas, muffins, cookies, milk, gyro meat, apples, grapefruit, yogurt, snacks, onion dips, stuffing mixes, tortilla, garlic bread, eggplant, sauerkraut, peppers, a sandwich and potato salad.

Dan and I both hate to see food going to waste, and if we can not spend money by helping divert perfectly good food from going to the landfill, so much the better. Most of this food is usually organic, though not always. Between the food we grew and preserved, the $50 gift card I won from Bob's Red Mill thanks to the Splendid Table, and going to these weekly giveaways, our food costs have gone way down. Now it's just a matter of dealing with all this food. Dan has been cooking up a storm all day, and I am juicing all the vegetables I can. At this rate though, we won't have to buy groceries for a while, other than for staples like salt and rice.

How it works: everyone arrives at 11:00am on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The volunteers have the tables with boxes of food all lined up at Richmond Park 450 E 600 S. A coin is flipped, to decide whether the inside or the outside of the line gets to go first - keep it egalitarian. The line is divided in two and we go in circles around the string of tables, taking only one item per box each time we pass by. People who abuse this and take more than one item (if they know the rules and ignore them) are either told to go the back of the line or come next time. Mostly it's older people (immigrants who don't speak English well) and young people that come. Most people have all they need by the time they make a full circle around the table, but there is always more bread, apples, or potatoes leftover. There is a donation bucket for gas for the volunteers. When the weather turns too cold/bad, the giveaway will happen at the Boing house on 500 east, just around the corner from the park.

It's such an excellent service. You never know what you'll get. One week it was largely gluten-free. Another week there was a lot of dairy. Another time it was mostly produce. There is always a lot of bread though, we never need to buy or bake bread again.

Today, because there was a huge abundance of food and not many people, one of the volunteers thanked me for coming and taking food. Where else does that happen? I love this city. 

my field's biggest academic conference in San Francisco

So: the reason I wasn't able to write a blog post three Fridays ago is because I was in San Francisco for a conference. I had a poster accepted and therefore needed to be there to present it. My supervisor's grant would have paid for my trip, but I applied for and won two travel awards: one was a matching grant between my department and Graduate Studies at the U, the other was a travel award that only applied to international students. As I am not yet a citizen, I qualified and won!

My flight was for 6:30am on Friday the 13th. I arrived at the airport at 5:45am which, it turns out, was too late. I had not accounted for the 300 people in the TSA lineup. They rescheduled me for another flight, four hours later that would take me to Seattle first and then SFO. So I settled in to a day of airports and airplanes and trying to catch wifi and charging stations. It wasn't so bad, really, but travelling is tiring. When I finally did get to my hotel around 6:00, I met up with my friends from the department, my roommate for our five days at the hotel, P, and my office comrade, B. We dropped our luggage and found dinner before retiring for the night.

Saturday was a day of pre-symposia tutorials. The first one was one on getting evaluation education into biomedical informatics programs. I was finally able to meet some characters I have only connected with online or whose papers I have read. Yes there is such a thing as academic fandom. It was great to put names to faces. I had also started tweeting the sessions I attended from my research twitter handle (not @yarnsalad). The afternoon session I went to wasn't very interesting but I did at the coffee break connect with a friend and former student of our department who moved away a couple of months ago, so it was good to catch up with him. I knew this conference would be one big happy reunion. Then I snuck off with some friends from SLC whom I had not seen in a while and went to a pub for a pint. That evening, I went with those same friends and one new friend to a fancy restaurant and discovered how awesome Uber is.

Sunday morning began with getting to the hotel gym at 6:15am, and I should have gone earlier to get a full workout in. I had to rush because I had a breakfast date arranged via Twitter more than a month ago with two Twitter friends - one I hadn't met yet (great sidebar story: Kim and I found each other on Twitter because of knitting, then we discovered we work in the same field and that we were both going to this conference! Also we both have personal as well as professional Twitter accounts.) and one who graduated with a PhD from my program at UVic the year I began my first Master's. Nice breakfast, too.

That morning's tutorial was about how to be a good leader within the organization and how to get into positions of leadership. I made some good connections there and met some more people who are famous in our industry. That day I found David's Deli and had an excellent kosher lunch.

It was after lunch on Sunday that the symposium officially began. Before the opening keynote speaker, the president and CEO of the organization welcomed everyone. He mentioned the Twitter stats for the day and a half of tutorials, and in the top 4 tweeters, he named me second! After that and for the rest of the conference, everyone from my department commented on my Twitter fame.

Sunday evening was busy, socially. There was the welcome reception where all the vendors and schools had booths in the exhibition room; ie, the place where all the free stuff is. I am happy to report that I now have 15 new pens, three water bottles, a couple of bags and some other fun trinkets. Later there was the reception for new members and new attendees. I'm on the membership committee for the organization so I went to interact with the new people. Rob, our organization's membership coordinator, brought some of us up to the front and gave us all a lovely introduction as "people we should talk to". It was Rob who I hold responsible for getting me back into the field at all, so I am happy to give back. I met some nice people, had too many extremely excellent desserts, and waited in anticipation to see if maybe I would win the raffle prizes of the bluetooth wireless headphones or the Apple watch! But alas, no, the headphones went to an alum from our department (so that's nice) and the Apple watch went to my friend and office mate mentioned above, B. After that reception, my hotel roommate P and I went up to the 46th floor for the Women in Informatics Networking Event. It was kind of an awkward space though so we ended up mostly just talking to each other. We haven't spent much time together outside of our one class prior to the conference, so it was really fun getting to know her, actually.

On Monday, P and I met for breakfast the group of people who had agreed to be mentors for the 10 high school scholars for this conference as well as the students themselves. I met the student I had been paired with, but for reasons, we didn't actually get to see each other much that day. I did get to meet his dad later though and got a photo of him with his poster. Nice kid, I was glad to hear he is planning to do a computer science degree (and then I recommended doing our Master's at UUtah). I live tweeted some interesting sessions. I spent some time with Barb in our booth in the exhibition room, talking to people about our program. Went back to David's Deli for lunch, this time a salad to go, which was also excellent. My committee chair gave a presentation about why our department is so awesome and other than the four people from our department who attended (and were also live tweeting), I think there were maybe three other people, so that was a bummer. We need to figure out a way to show people how great it is to live in Utah.

The last session of the day was the presentations of the high school scholars. Five of them had papers, the other five (including my buddy) had posters. It was a very well attended session, standing room only. One of the organizers introduced the program and the names of all the graduate student mentors went up on the big screen - three students from our department, Utah was well-represented!

The thing about these conferences is that you are not done when the sessions finish at 5pm. I still had two other events to attend. The first was the membership committee - we usually meet by Citrix for an hour every month, but this time we finally got to meet in person. It was really cool to put faces to names. I had to leave that meeting early though, because our department chair had arranged a dinner for our department people and alumni at a nearby restaurant. It was a fun evening and I was glad for an early night - after all this busy time I needed some down time.

Tuesday morning I got up at 5:30 to get to the gym earlier (since I had another 7:00 breakfast date). When I got to the gym at 5:45, every one of the 20 exercise machines were full and there were three people waiting. Eventually I got onto a spin bike and put in a 45-minute workout. The 7:00 breakfast was to meet with all the people who had been working on the Year in Review - 18 of us had spent the last six months reviewing 1400 articles to see what was relevant and what kinds of themes have emerged in our field since the last Symposium. That was awesome. It was great to meet those people just before the session where our leader, Patti, presented them to an overstuffed room with at least 1,000 people. Again my name on the big screen. She did an amazing job of condensing all that information into a synopsis.

Tuesday was my big day partly because of that, but also because it was my day for my poster presentation (there were about 400 posters, split into two days). I had bought myself a suit back in August to wear for that day, that moment. I attended my poster from 5:00-6:30pm. At the end of it, one of the organization's staff members came up to me with the photographer and asked to take my photo. I was so touched! They appreciated all the tweeting I had done and my level of commitment to the organization. So lots of arranging of hair and ears, turn this way, lean in, he took a few dozen snaps. A week later, she sent me these:

She said "you never know where this photo will turn up". Of course I sent her an email back, squeeing, which made her day. :-)

Back to the Symposium. After my poster presentation was done, I went to my room and changed into the dress I wore to another fancy restaurant for dinner. I also got in a half-hour phone conversation with Dan - in the few days I was there I hadn't had much time to chat with him other than to say things were going great (me) and the kitty misses me (him). Dinner was great and fun, I really enjoyed my dinner company. When I got back to the hotel I found my office mate B and we ended up chatting with one of the organization's leaders for half an hour about movies, of all things. So great to make that human connection.

Wednesday was the last day. We had no breakfast plans so were happy when they had muffins out for the morning coffee break. (My room mate P and I are both students and experienced free food scavengers). The closing keynote was just after lunch and once again they mentioned the conference's Twitter stats. They showed a slide with the top 10: I was number 5, a post-doc from our department was number 7, and our department (me) was number 10. Go Utah!  The closing keynote was great and I think he gave us all some good ideas for how to move forward.

I was sitting next to B for the closing, and afterward when people were leaving, we stood up and turned around to find one of our department's alumni with two people on his team from South Carolina - I had not met any of them before but we all became fast friends and decided to have lunch together. We found a great little Pakistani restaurant (one of the women we were with is Pakistani) and I swear it was the best meal I had in San Francisco. Sooooo good. (why didn't I take a picture of my chicken tikka masala?) Then we walked over the hill to Ghirardelli Square because of course, it's San Francisco. Burned off all the lunch calories doing that walk! Had a fabulous time with our three new friends and we hope to turn that into a more formal collaboration in the future.

B and I retrieved our luggage from the hotel and went to meet a Twitter friend whom I've been Twitter friends with since I first signed up back in 2009! We've been through a lot together and we finally met in person! It was so awesome to meet Heather and I hope next time I can spend more time with her in her city. B and I took BART to the airport, went to our departure gates, and he went off to another conference on the east coast while I went home, to sleep, to catch up on a week of being away.

I will be finishing my degree, my second Master's degree, in April 2016. While they are still encouraging me to do a PhD, (and made a very persuasive pitch), I think I am going to stay the course. Part of my effort at this conference was to see what kind of work is out there (I was invited to go to Seattle, Nashville, and Portland). I really love Salt Lake though, I have no plans to leave it any time soon. More on the job front as I find out what's happening...

Juicing: a thing I am doing now

Ok so sometime last month, Leilani Munter came to give a talk at the new law building at the University of Utah. The Law department at the U has a strong environmental program and I have been to several of the events. This one was part of a series called "Trailblazers of Clean Energy", and how could I not attend a lecture by a "vegan hippie chick who loves race cars"? Also: it's only six blocks from my house.

So she talked about a lot of things, solar energy and the race car industry. Toward the end of the talk she hammered home the point about a vegan diet, encouraging all the attendees to at least start with "Meat Free Mondays" (now a popular thing in the US). She is part of the team that brought out The Cove, Blackfish, and soon to be released Racing Extinction. The take home message with the latter was "start with one thing". She included watching documentaries.

I sat on her ideas for a few weeks. Then I happened to open up Netflix last week and came on a couple of titles she mentioned, including Forks Over Knives (which I watched first) and I felt the pull to move towards a plant-based, whole foods diet. Yes, for the environment and to keep livestock out of terror, but it was more about my health. I eat really well, I exercise, drink lots of water, get enough sleep, I have good skin hygiene but I still have terrible acne and I feel tired all the time. And I seem to be producing a lot of mucous. And a few other minor symptoms that, when you add them up, point to a common culprit. This was validated for me a few weeks ago when I was sick with a cold, and any time I have a cold I avoid dairy. I love cheese and enjoy yogurt, but you know, I could probably live without them. So that was the first step.

Then a few days after watching that film, I saw (also on Neflix) Hungry for Change and that really hit home for me. They have a book and things you can print and hang on your fridge. I was finally convinced about the virtues of juicing. I bought a crappy old juicer at the DI thrift store a few months ago and dusted it off. Today I made juice for the sixth day in a row.

I want clear skin. I'm going to be looking for a job soon for when I graduate in May, and I'm going to our field's biggest academic conference in three weeks (I'm presenting a poster), so I want to look my best. In the film they said we can expect a difference (in skin) after 10-15 days, and it's already happening for me on day 6. I've also lost 2.5 pounds in that time. I haven't noticed a huge change energy-wise, but there are other factors there too, I'm sure.

I look at all vegetables now in terms of their juicability in the little machine that I have. It's a centrifugal grinder so it's not awesome but hey, for $8 I can't complain. I remember a time when I was living in Victoria, everyone was giving them away after the last juicing craze. They were all over the place in second hand stores. I'm guessing they have gotten a lot better in the interim because I was lucky to find the one I have. One day, when I have a job after I graduate, I'll get a nice one.

Meanwhile, I am planning a lot of beets and carrots and leafy greens in next year's garden, wherever that may be. 

time to blog

Hello readers, do I have any readers left?

When I wasn't working very much or at all, especially when I was waiting for immigration, I had all kinds of time to write. I remember the days when I had the leisure time to blog about all the different kinds of scissors I owned. Those were the days! Now I barely have time to think about blogging but it doesn't mean I have given up on it entirely. In fact, I have now set myself a weekly reminder in my work calendar to update my blog. Not that I will actually get to it every week, but this is a start.

On the whole, things are going very well for me and Dan. I am just half a year away from finishing this non-thesis Master's degree in Biomedical Informatics and then I will be let loose into the world to find some sort of job. I don't know yet what that will be, there is just so much opportunity out there that I think it will be difficult to decide. We do know we plan to stay put in the Salt Lake valley for  a while - I love it here. This is the best place I have ever lived. So my career options are: University of Utah Health Care (basically where I am now), Veteran's Affairs (I have a partial appointment there), Intermountain Health, and industry. I haven't formally started looking yet, I will do that launch next month at the AMIA Symposium and then really start hustling in 2016.

This symposium is our industry's biggest academic convention. It's in San Francisco this year. I haven't been since 2013 when I saved up my tips from bartending in North Carolina and took the Amtrak to DC, I was determined to get back into the field. I'm going this year because I had a poster accepted and then I won some travel awards to allow me to attend. The poster is about a really interesting project that we had some excellent results with, something I continue to work on with user interface design. Who know I would end up doing user interface design? I'm doing all kinds of things I never thought I would/could and I have to say it's been an excellent experience.

It is sort of funny - I received a Master's from the University of Victoria in 2009 in Health Information Science, and this is essentially the same degree - Biomedical Informatics - but in some ways this program is more robust and I am entrenched in the American health care system. I have had excellent training and mentorship, tons of opportunities and have made a great many friendships.

So 2016 will be a big year for me. On February 4, I will be eligible to apply for US Citizenship (three years!). Six weeks later I will turn 42 on the full moon lunar eclipse, so I will basically know the meaning of life by then, right? Then I will graduate and get an awesome new job and maybe we will find a way to buy a house? Next year holds a lot of promise.

Socially, we have become known as people who know our way around food and the garden. We have built up really a lot of reserves (I grew enough cucumbers so that I won't need to make mustard pickle again until at least 2017) and seeds. People know I'm a gardener and just give me seeds all the time. I can't turn them down. I have also been saving seeds so at this rate I have enough for a field of sunflowers, marigolds and calendula, among other things. I have nurtured kombucha mothers and sourdough starters and have been able to give them away and teach others how to make stuff. These things are coming second nature to me now and this kind of sharing has gone a long way to help build social capital.

I have been able to make and grow a lot of really amazing friendships in the nearly two years since we have been in SLC. A number of those friendships began early on in our time here, and they have been incredibly important for my mental health. We are all busy people but it just seems so easy to get together and do stuff, even if it's just running into the neighbor by chance and having a great conversation. We have gotten to know a lot of our neighbors and it's nice feeling that level of security - we all have each other's back.

I haven't been knitting much since I have been here - between school, work, and gardening/preserving, there really hasn't been time. I accept that it's a part of my life/identity that will always be with me but other things have to take precedence right now.

Sam is doing great. Dan has added ramps to her scratching posts so it's easier for her to get up and down. We have also added steps to the sofas and bed so she doesn't have to claw her way up. She's 13 and has sore hips, so she doesn't jump up like she used to. I took her to the vet for a check up in August and she received a clean bill of health. Not only that, but everyone at the clinic gushed at how beautiful she is. Of course they did!

I have a list of things I plan to write about (and of course I'm willing to take requests) so I won't go into too much detail right now on all our adventures. Just know I am trying, I do plan to keep writing. Someday this may come in handy... 

Adventures in August 2014

This is the month where the serious fruit and vegetable harvest began and it felt like we were spending all our time either at the garden or at home processing our harvest.

This is the very beginning of what would become hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. Or at least it felt like that much.

August is when I started volunteering with Green Urban Lunch Box. They have a fruit share program where home owners can register their fruit trees. When the trees are ripe, volunteers come and pick the tree. One third goes to the home owner (if they want it, they often do not), one third to the organization, and the rest gets divided among the volunteers. In just a few hours worth of harvest I came home with 40 pounds of apricots on my first pick!

Next year I will get in early enough for the cherry harvest, but I sure got a LOT of fruit from the 2014 harvest. It was a great way to meet people and climb trees too! 

Our dear neighbour Colette invited us over for a fancy dinner party in early August. This began a string of fancy dinner parties at her house.

For this dinner party, our hostess declared we must all wear goggles.

This is Colette's dog Gabi. Gabi is 12 years old and my favourite dog. She was a sort of rescue (there is a long story, I don't remember) and Gabi can't see very well so she is sure to bark at everyone who comes by and will continue to bark until she knows it is you. We have big cuddle sessions every time I go over there.

Funeral potatoes. It's a Utah/Mormon thing, apparently.

We have now been corrupted.

Plum season!

Nectarines!

I canned all these nectarines and I am still eating them for breakfast. :-)

Peaches! Lots of these got dehydrated and then instantly eaten by Dan because they were so delicious. But some also got canned.

We did a number of things with the plums. Some got suspended in vodka for an infusion. Some got dried. Some were made into an amazing plum chutney that goes very nicely with roasted meat.

We have this lovely space in our yard area that is very conducive to block parties. A few times in the summer we had people over for some good times and cocktails that increased in potency as the night went on (I was bartending).

Gabi, sitting cutely.

We couldn't keep up with the cucumbers.

So I took some to work and shot at my office mate with them. I posted a photo on twitter and @jonmchris improved my cumber-slinging photo.

Oh yes on the leadership thing with getting the twitter account going again. They made me sit for a photo and everything.

Fun fact about apricots: if you have enough pits and let them dry out a bit, then go at them with a hammer, you can get at what is called the "bitter almond" inside. Stick these babies in vodka (Neutral Grain Spirit) and let them infuse for a few months, strain, add sugar and voila! You have amaretto.

The start of our infusion collection.

One of the best things about harvesting fruit with Green Urban Lunch Box was grapes. And they were seedless grapes! Someone had given me her dehydrator and we had that thing going nonstop for about six weeks. Raisins! They were so delicious that Dan hid and hoarded them.

I just had to tweet this photo of the chicken burger with bacon made at the Red Onion, the cafeteria in our building at work. It's not on the menu but it's one of the best chicken burgers I have ever had. And they made it just for me. :-)

Near the end of August our beloved friends Peter and Burgle came to visit us from Victoria! We didn't have a lot of time with them, I had grad school orientation and then started classes, but we packed in as much as we could. One of the important things: take them to Yogurtland for self-serve soft serve yogurt and toppings!

We were also able to get away for a day to go camping in the desert. We drove southwest towards Fish Lake. Mr. Cupcake came too.

There had been some torrential rains in the days preceding our adventure, we were exploring.

Stopped at what was supposed to be a hot spring, according to the map. There was a hot spring but it was really stinky and extremely hot. Only the men were brave (?) enough to go in. Burgle and I were not willing to risk quicksand or stinky feet, so we sensibly stayed out.

(They did make it back alive, by the way).

Our perfect camp spot was just around the corner on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. We found a flat enough space, set up our tents, got the fire going, and roasted sausages from Costco.

View from our truck tent the next morning. In the whole time we were there not a single other vehicle went by.

Because we are adventurers, we weren't going to to back the way we came, so we took the road toward Nevada that had really been washed out due to the aforementioned torrential rains. Yay four wheel drive!

We drove up in the northeast part of Elko county, Nevada, stopped at Wendover for snacks, and then stopped again at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

It's a pretty spectacular place, especially on a warm sunny day. The other side of the highway has a better view but this was enough to show just how much salt there is!

That wraps up August 2014!