This American Life, my favorite radio program and now favorite podcast, is going TV. It's getting quite a bit of attention and I'm enjoying the articles, even if they do make me homesick.
I discovered the joy of podcasts after receiving a gorgeous red iPod for Christmas as a running incentive gift. Music is nice, but podcasts are great. They are great on the train and, if I can get the darn ear buds to stay in my ears, they're also great for running. There's something about good talk radio that reminds me of life back in Carrboro.
My remote talk radio world would be complete if only I could find a Car Talk podcast. Unfortunately, they only seem to be available for a (steep) price. At least they have the decency to call it the "Shameless Commerce" department.
23 March 2007
21 March 2007
Running Milestone (almost)
I ran 4.8 km in 40:27 minutes today. I feel triumphant!
Back in November, I had a run-in with the gym who forgot to remind me that I owed them money and then wanted me to pay €100 to quit. Rather confusing bureaucracy problem, but it was the moment when it became clear that if I wanted to exercise, I needed to find a way to do it without a gym membership. After doing some thinking and surfing, I found a couple of websites with advice for starting running including detailed schedules. With running broken down to walking and really short (five minute) runs to start, I figured even I could try. So I did.
The first month, I walked a few times a week for 20 minutes at a time. On Christmas Day I went for my first "run" on the dike behind my in-law's house. The stats for that day? 2.4 km in 27:00 minutes. The time includes walking before and after to warm up and cool down. I had to concentrate hard to run those first 10 minutes and look at me now!
Today I came home red-faced and a little achy in the legs and then collapsed into the shower. It's practically 5km. Now I'm wondering if I can make it to 10km...
Back in November, I had a run-in with the gym who forgot to remind me that I owed them money and then wanted me to pay €100 to quit. Rather confusing bureaucracy problem, but it was the moment when it became clear that if I wanted to exercise, I needed to find a way to do it without a gym membership. After doing some thinking and surfing, I found a couple of websites with advice for starting running including detailed schedules. With running broken down to walking and really short (five minute) runs to start, I figured even I could try. So I did.
The first month, I walked a few times a week for 20 minutes at a time. On Christmas Day I went for my first "run" on the dike behind my in-law's house. The stats for that day? 2.4 km in 27:00 minutes. The time includes walking before and after to warm up and cool down. I had to concentrate hard to run those first 10 minutes and look at me now!
Today I came home red-faced and a little achy in the legs and then collapsed into the shower. It's practically 5km. Now I'm wondering if I can make it to 10km...
19 March 2007
Working at Home
No classes at work this week so I can work at home. And I do plan to work, even made up a fairly detailed schedule to keep myself going. My challenge is to stay productive and cheerful throughout the week. Tougher than it sounds.
In the meantime, I discovered a particularly interesting blog, The Happiness Project. Sounds like a great project to keep up with. Since discovering Google Reader, blogs and have become easier to keep track of and I'm finding more and more that are interesting and worth following. It's amazing how much people are doing. It's also quite interesting to think about this phenomenon of public work, sharing your thoughts and distractions with the world - and the world paying attention.
In the meantime, I discovered a particularly interesting blog, The Happiness Project. Sounds like a great project to keep up with. Since discovering Google Reader, blogs and have become easier to keep track of and I'm finding more and more that are interesting and worth following. It's amazing how much people are doing. It's also quite interesting to think about this phenomenon of public work, sharing your thoughts and distractions with the world - and the world paying attention.
18 March 2007
Cotyledons
As a part of last week's gardening bonanza, I started some vegetable seeds. The future harvest includes mint, onions, carrots, radish, lettuce, zucchini, and cucumbers. For now, they are living in six recycled plastic containers upstairs under the skylight. Ever the anxious gardener, I get excited over every little change. Three radishes were popping up by the middle of the week and now nearly all the zucchinis (courgettes) and cucumbers are out. I'm surprised by how quickly the seeds germinated, pushing up their little codyledons. Of course, a couple early starters make all the rest look slow. Therefore, despite the early surprises, I'm still going to have to be patient for the rest to appear!
12 March 2007
Strange Weather and Sunday Biking
We spent most of the weekend working on the yard. I'm nervous about all the trees we trimmed up because of the early spring we're having. According to the experts, spring is 3-4 weeks early. That means everything that wasn't supposed to be blooming for a while is blooming now. The positive side of that is beautiful bright days.
Is there a negative side to an early spring? Well, they are playing An Inconvenient Truth for free in the Netherlands this month. That probably isn't a coincidence. Oddly, while looking for this link, I ran across another website that is trying to give away the DVD. Further exploration revealed that this is a generous plan with limited funding.
Incidentally, I heard from a well-informed colleague that What's up with the Weather is a more informative documentary than Al Gore's Academy Award winner. It is supposedly less Gore biography and more factual. For example, there are interviews with oil industry folks who talk about the benefits of global warming, like Iowa getting an extended growing season. For balance, there are also some shocking pictures of shrinking glaciers. I'll have to check it out. Let me know if you've seen it.
In true Dutch fashion, we had to get out of the house on Sunday to enjoy the warm weather. Our outing was a 25km bike ride through the Kennmer dunes national park to Parnassia on the North Sea. There's a cafe at Parnassia that's perfect for warming up and drinking hot cocoa, which we did. I was amazed that anti-athletic me survived and even enjoyed the long ride. It would have been out of the question a couple years ago. The ride itself was great fun! The national park is between Haarlem and the North Sea, which is all sand dunes covered with vegetation and scattered with ponds. I found some pictures here, but no really comprehensive sites, so you will just have to come see it for yourself.
On our way back, we passed a couple going around a corner and face to face with a big red woolly cow standing placidly in the middle of the road. Imagine images of India with traffic stopped for a lone skinny cow, except this one was red, woolly, and had huge horns. Now, can you imagine people and woolly cows sharing a path in the US? Either the people would be in cars or the cows would be behind fences. Mysteriously, in the dunes, not only do the animals roam free but no one bothers them. Of course, the gigantic horns might help there. We biked around them without stopping or being gouged by a horn and carried on home. It was a great afternoon!
Is there a negative side to an early spring? Well, they are playing An Inconvenient Truth for free in the Netherlands this month. That probably isn't a coincidence. Oddly, while looking for this link, I ran across another website that is trying to give away the DVD. Further exploration revealed that this is a generous plan with limited funding.
Incidentally, I heard from a well-informed colleague that What's up with the Weather is a more informative documentary than Al Gore's Academy Award winner. It is supposedly less Gore biography and more factual. For example, there are interviews with oil industry folks who talk about the benefits of global warming, like Iowa getting an extended growing season. For balance, there are also some shocking pictures of shrinking glaciers. I'll have to check it out. Let me know if you've seen it.
In true Dutch fashion, we had to get out of the house on Sunday to enjoy the warm weather. Our outing was a 25km bike ride through the Kennmer dunes national park to Parnassia on the North Sea. There's a cafe at Parnassia that's perfect for warming up and drinking hot cocoa, which we did. I was amazed that anti-athletic me survived and even enjoyed the long ride. It would have been out of the question a couple years ago. The ride itself was great fun! The national park is between Haarlem and the North Sea, which is all sand dunes covered with vegetation and scattered with ponds. I found some pictures here, but no really comprehensive sites, so you will just have to come see it for yourself.
On our way back, we passed a couple going around a corner and face to face with a big red woolly cow standing placidly in the middle of the road. Imagine images of India with traffic stopped for a lone skinny cow, except this one was red, woolly, and had huge horns. Now, can you imagine people and woolly cows sharing a path in the US? Either the people would be in cars or the cows would be behind fences. Mysteriously, in the dunes, not only do the animals roam free but no one bothers them. Of course, the gigantic horns might help there. We biked around them without stopping or being gouged by a horn and carried on home. It was a great afternoon!
10 March 2007
Collaborative Research with Strangers
On one of my regular blog haunts, Notebookism, I found link to a fascinating site. Basically, someone found an name book from the 1940s at a flea market, bought it, and is getting help from all sorts of people on the internet to translate and interpret it.
The book is a name book that belonged to a graduating student at a university in China in Shanghai. It is filled with comments from his friends and acquaintances. Amazingly, they have even managed a likely Post Options identification of one of the contributors.
The book is a name book that belonged to a graduating student at a university in China in Shanghai. It is filled with comments from his friends and acquaintances. Amazingly, they have even managed a likely Post Options identification of one of the contributors.
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