Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Fit February

New Year's Eve I made a hasty resolution to not eat any candy this year. (Those of you that know me well may want to pick your jaws up off the floor now.) Well it's been a month and I'm candy-free. It really hasn't been that difficult mostly because I don't buy any so it's not around for me to see and then want to eat. On an unrelated note, I have been eating more cookies lately. I wonder if the two are correlated. :)

Now to the main topic of today's post: Fit February. This semester my classes are all during late morning and afternoon and I've been less than motivated to get up in the mornings. So to help me be more motivated and self-disciplined, I've decided to make this month Fit February. Here's how it works: I will do some form of exercise (yoga, racquetball, tai chi, running, jumping jacks, etc.) every day during the month of February.

I already got a head start by going for a run Sunday prevening. And, prepare yourself, I liked it {gasp}!  I didn't go very far on the road before I stumbled across the Urban Trail.


Wouldn't it be nice for this to be part of your run? In case you were wondering, yes that is snow despite it being 50 degrees.

One of the reasons I liked it was because I have no idea how far I went distance-wise. I just ran for a while and then turned around. It also felt good for my ankle. I rolled it pretty good in October and it's been slowly getting better and I think running will strengthen it enough to eventually be good as new!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

One Week Down...15 to go

Well I survived the first week of school relatively unscathed and I can tell you that this semester will be very busy. In fact, it will the the most difficult semester of my graduate career. I already have two homework assignments to work on and 70 quizzes to grade. Homework assignments take between 1 and 5 hours to complete depending on which class they are for (Theory of Linear Models and Math Stats II assignments take much longer that Statistical Methods II assignments.) Next week I will get three more homework assignments (one for each class I'm taking) and will have to grade 70 homework assignments and 70 worksheets. Oh the joys of grad school :)

One nice thing about this semester is that I'm teaching the same class that I did last semester, only this time I'm teaching two sections instead of one. So there's twice as much stuff to grade, but very little preparation as I can simply reuse all the lecture notes and worksheets that I made last semester, which is a huge time-saver.

One interesting thing that happened this week is that we convinced one of the GTAs in the math program to switch to the stats program. Welcome to the dark side Phil.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Food Tour

Food Tour (n.) - Drive around and eat small amounts of food in multiple eateries.
Sala Thai

Sala Thai - Shrimp Wonton Soup

Sala Thai - Napkins

Sala Thai - Pad Thai

Sala Thai - BBQ Chicken

Sala Thai - Blended Thai Tea
Gyro House - Closed Sundays!

Cyprus Grill

Cyprus Grill - Spanakopita

Cyprus Grill - Falafel Dinner with Greek Fries

Cyprus Grill - Baklava

Bluewater Grill

Bluewater Grill - Spicy Charred Edamame

Bluewater Grill - Calamari Fritti

Bluewater Grill - used to be Key Lime Pie

Bombay Spice Grill

Bombay Spice Grill - Chef's Lamb Combo Plate

Monday, January 9, 2012

Vacation

A week ago, my family and I drove out to Arizona for vacation. Despite having the flu, which was terrible, we all had a good time skiing in Flagstaff, hiking in the Grand Canyon, and biking in Phoenix.