Tell me who are you

I know I can be hard on myself on this blog, hence the happiness posts from earlier in the month.  The main reason for it being that I'm not living up to the standards (admittedly high) that I've set for myself.  These past few days have been different.  I've been in California (Pinnacles and Yosemite) and Luke and I have hiked the Pinnacles High Peaks Trail, Yosemite's Four Mile Trail/Panorama Trail and Upper Yosemite Falls.  Its been over 30 miles of hiking with 10000+ feet of elevation gain.  This is who I want to be.  I'm active all day and don't struggle with my usual sin issues because I'm too busy being distracted by the majesty of God's creation.  At night, we celebrate with a burger and a beer and if there's any time left, I'll read.  Granted, this would be really hard to do in Indiana with the total lack of possible elevation change and it would also be difficult to do while maintaining a job, but for now, I'm thrilled.  I'm having a blast out here.  I'm also thankful though that we're taking today off to just drive by Lake Tahoe because my calves could really use the rest.  Also, the back of my right heel has been rubbed raw because I didn't switch out of my boots and into my trail runners soon enough, but that's okay because its a small price to pay for the glory that I've witnessed.  This should knock out my second goal of the summer as well as I'm assuming I have some awesome pictures.  They'll get posted later in the week after I get back.

Let's put this town in our rear view mirror

So I bought a bike.  Its a 2015 Specialized CrossRoads Comfort bike so its not quite a road bike and not quite a mountain bike, but more inbetween so I can safely handle roads and some basic trails but there isn't much suspension.  I got my first ride in with Lindsey on Thursday and knocked out 8 miles of the 100 mile goal.  I'm fairly committed to riding the first weekend of ROC Michigan with her so that would actually take out the entire 100 miles right there.  I'm looking forward to riding a lot more this summer.

I'm also entering the period of summer where Julie starts to hate me.  I just got back home from being in Michigan for the weekend so I could see my parents and finally clean out my Michigan checking account.  In the next little while, I will also head down to Brown County for some hiking if the weather prevails, head up to Milwaukee for a baseball game with the family, and then take off for San Francisco to see all sorts of fun things in Central California.  Hooray summer! Hooray academia!

Friday highlights

I don't want anyone to think that I'm skipping out on highlights already.  I'm just getting to it rather late today.  The best part of Friday morning was getting out and running again for the first time since the marathon.  All my muscles were good and my pace was fine if a little slow.  My knee was still a little janked and I might want to get that looked at during my next physical but it still felt really good just to get out there and run.  Friday night, I went over to Lindsey's place and we walked for a while then had a picnic where I got swarmed with bugs and Lindsey did not.  That's not cool.  We then hung out for a while and watched Stand By Me which I had never seen despite it being nearly as old as I am.  There were plenty of good 80s memories though.  By the way, 80s kids >> 90s kids.

Today, I wanted to go out and finally buy my bike.  I didn't do it for reasons I can't fully explain.  I am a little intimidated by this since its just been so long since I've actually ridden a bike and I don't want to go in to a bike shop and admit that I don't know what I'm talking about.  I don't like feeling dumb, but nobody really does.  I don't know if I've been on a bike since 2001.  Its very possible that I've run 3500+ miles since I last did a mile on a bike.

I also watched Fermat's Room tonight to get a start on some of my mathy goals.  There weren't really as many math riddles as I had hoped and all but one was actually explained.  I knew the answers to most, but I did look up the answer to the one they didn't explain.  Without going into too much detail or giving away the ending to a movie none of you will actually watch, the last few minutes did cover the conundrums of mathematical research very well.  I'm glad I watched it even if it didn't go as deep as I would have hoped.

Thursday's highlights

I bought books yesterday.  Yes, it was the best part of yesterday because any day I buy books, its usually the best part of my day.  I still have a goal of one day owning 1000+ books.  I believe I'm currently a little over 300 so I have a ways to go still.  I originally headed out to Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy of Kevin DeYoung's Don't Call It a Comeback for a book study I'll be joining with my guys from softball, but alas, they didn't have it.  I couldn't find any other bookstores in the area so I came home and ordered it off Amazon.  I also picked up Andy Weir's The Martian, Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss and Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones and Butter.

Wednesday's highlights

Yesterday was a good day.  I still have yet to have a really bad day volunteering at the food pantry and I'm so glad that I chose to do that on a whim because I wanted to get some community service on my record for my job.

Also, Lindsey invited me out to a hospitality night with her small group and that was a very enjoyable time.

Tuesday's highlights

The best part about yesterday was just taking some time off to read.  I haven't been back in a book for a little while so this was nice and relaxing.  Also, the dark chocolate brownies topped with strawberries and ice cream weren't bad either.

I'm either going to need to start combining these posts just so I don't have ridiculously short posts or I'm going to start having really good days.  Lets start with the latter and try to make today a really good day.

So you got to please yourself

Instead of getting on myself for not necessarily being a great person the last couple of days, I'm going to write a post each morning for the rest of the week talking about the best part of my day from the previous day.  Its time to add a little more happy to this blog.

Highlights from yesterday:
1) I had my annual meeting with my dean.  I expected a quick little ten minute meeting just discussing my year but we ended up talking for nearly an hour and discussed everything from class techniques to recruitment efforts to church life.  It really made me feel like I am valued as a faculty member and that I can fully contribute to campus life.

2) Softball started up again last week but I chose not to play due to my shoulder and it being the day after a marathon.  Last night was my first time back out there and even though I was pretty terrible with my throws to first, it was still a tremendous amount of fun and we won both games.  I'm glad to have that back.

Baby, we were born to run

Goal #1 was a success.  I finished the Flying Pig marathon this morning in 3:52:25 which is about twenty minutes slower than the Grand Rapids marathon from a couple years ago.  However, Cincinnati is much hillier and my training was much worse due to injuries and everything in my legs but my hips cramped this morning so I'm still happy.  I started off fast and was averaging 8:00 miles (3:30 pace) for the first half but things definitely went downhill starting around mile 18 or so.  My last mile was just under 12 minutes and that was probably actually faster than the previous two miles.  I was a little worried about my mental toughness those last few miles, but I wasn't going to give it up since I had come so far already and besides, while I know there were first aid stations on the course, they weren't blatantly obvious and I wasn't going to go out of my way to look for them just so I could give up.  I was cramping and hurting, but not injured.  I did make the mistake of taking a GU at mile 18 from the Michigan hydration station.  I think it messed with my stomach and helped lead to a crappy finish.  I felt terrible going through the refreshments at the end of the race when I should have been celebrating.  About 45 minutes after the race, right as Julie and I were getting back to our car, I ended up puking my guts out - all banana and lemon-lime gatorade.  It wasn't pretty but once it was over, I felt a lot better.  This marathon in general hurt, but not enough to overcome how accomplished I feel right now.  Chances are I'll still knock out at least another one sometime in the next couple of years.

And it's a fine place to be

Happy post!

Yeah, technically, there's still exams to be written, given and graded, but screw it, I'm doing the summer goals post a little early because I want to use this weekend to accomplish the first one.

This is the 11th year of the summer goals and I still haven't managed to hit a perfect 10/10 yet.  Maybe this is the year.

1) Run the Flying Pig marathon.  I'm doing this Sunday morning.  Cincy is hilly and I've battled through a jammed knee and rolled ankle during training as well as currently being in therapy for a pinched nerve in my neck.  I'm not looking to p.r., I'll be happy to finish and I'll be even happier if I get a medal with a pig butt on it.

2) Take at least three awesome pictures of California.  Pinnacles, Yosemites, Lake Tahoe, Lassen Volcanic and San Francisco.  I don't think this should be too hard to do it.

3) Read both Journey Through Genius and Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith,  I also want to watch Fermat's Room because I want to do some mathy stuff this summer.

4) Do an analysis on the probability distribution for starting hands for Texas Hold 'Em poker.  Actual mathy stuff that's out there, but I want a full distribution as opposed to just the winning probability.

5) Find more opportunities to volunteer.

6) Bike 100+ miles.  Step 1 is to buy a bike.  Step 2 is to make amends with my knees.

7)

8) Initiate the home buying process.  I certainly don't plan on actually buying something yet, but I should talk to a banker and see how much home I could actually afford.  After that, I need to get out and see what homes in my price range actually look like in both Fishers and Noblesville and maybe even Anderson if the first two depress me.  I'd check out Carmel too, but I can afford roughly a used refrigerator box out there.  Don't get me wrong, it'd be a really nice refrigerator box, but I want at least two rooms.

9) Hike another 14er and not do it solo this time.

10) Host a game night that includes the other math professors.  Hooray for a social life! Maybe I'll actually have one this summer.