Happy Days

Well it has certainly been a long time since I posted in here.  Lots has been going on since then!

For the first 2.5 weeks of June I was at CERN doing a test beam.  That means we brought our equipment over there and tested it in the beam line.  There are of course always things that will go wrong when you move equipment from one place and set it all up in another, and I know this very well.  However I was NOT prepared for what happened.  Really I don't think there could have been a better example of Murphy's Law.  Absolutely EVERYTHING went wrong.  But eventually we got a bit of data, after lots of 15 hour work days (one day even 17 hours) and frustration.

Then it was back to PSI for a couple weeks.  Most of my time in the summer is spent supervising a couple of the students who come from the US.  This summer one of my students is a native Spanish speaker, and is not exactly fluent in English.  It has been a challenge but I definitely think he is improving his English.  It does mean that things move a little slowly though because it takes a lot of time to communicate.  Luckily one of our post-docs speaks Spanish and can serve as translator when the English breaks down.

The next adventure was vacation!!!  I met my sister for a wonderful  1.5 week vacation.  We met up in Paris and spent 5 days there, then took the TGV to Geneva and spent one day there, touring CERN and seeing a bit of the city.  Then we flew down to Rome for another 5 days.  It was very hot.  And we walked.  A lot.  An average of 10 miles per day (my phone has a pedometer).  My sister's feet were literally covered in blisters.  Curiously, mine were fine other than one small blister and my heels cracking from being dry, but that's just normal summer for me.

I came back to work on Monday and found out one of the students managed to flood our lab while I was gone; luckily nothing really seems to be permanently damaged.  Best case scenario really, because they certainly learned a lesson and nothing is lost.  But I think from now on I'll take my vacations when the students aren't here.  Last year while I was on vacation (sitting by the pool in the French countryside just outside of Toulouse) one of the students almost set the lab on fire.  Who knows what would happen next year...

So now I'm back at PSI for a couple weeks.  I seem to never stay here too long though.  :-)  First week of August I will be down in the mountains for a summer school run by PSI.  Should be pretty nice.  Lectures in the mornings and early afternoon, and then free time in the mountains in the late afternoon and evenings.  It will almost feel like vacation!  The next trip will be for a conference my group has organized, also in the mountains here in Switzerland, but a different part.  That's at the beginning of September.  After that I will go for a long weekend with some friends to Porto, in Portugal.  I love living here in Europe where you can get around for so cheaply!  Then I have another meeting, this time in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the end of September.  Then mid-October I have a meeting in KS.  I'm hoping on that trip to be able to swing by Cincinatti to see my sister and spend a week or so working at KU, in order to see my Lawrence friends.

After that things will calm down a bit in terms of travelling.  I'll still be plenty busy though.  I have to take my comprehensive exams sometime in January or February, so I'll probably schedule that right after Christmas and just go to KS before coming back to Swiss-land.  I'm trying not to think about that too much right now because I'm pretty much terrified that I'm not going to pass those.  I've been away from course-work for too long and am really going to have to buckle down to remember all that stuff.  And I'm not really the "studying" type.

But it will all be worth it after that, because that's when the most awesome vacation will be.  At the end of Feb/beginning of March I'll be going to Colombia (that's right, the country) with some of my friends (one of whom is from there) for 3 weeks!  It will be fantastic I'm sure and a really good way to relax (and hopefully celebrate) after my exams. (I have a lot of phrases in parentheses in this paragraph.)

Wow this post is long. 

Anyway, the last bit of fun stuff for this post is that despite eating gelato and/or pizza at least once per day on vacation, I lost 2-3 pounds!  And that means that for the first time in years, I have made it to under 180!!!!  I've felt for a while now that I've been stuck, hovering just above 180.  I'd get close to it but then bounce right back up.  So I feel like I've sort of broken through a wall now.  It's an entirely mental thing, but it makes all the difference really.

Staying Focused

Sometimes I find it difficult to stay focused on what is important, and to keep my mindset where it should be.  The most common example for me is in my weight loss process.  I have a tendency to focus on where I want to be, and how far I have to go to get there, instead of on how far I've come.  I spent 3 years in college eating crap and sitting on my butt and put on 60 pounds.  Yikes!  And I knew better.  I had worked hard in high school to drop some of my extra weight.  I was a little on the heavy side ever since middle school.  My parents are both overweight.  So I know that I am going to have to work extra hard to get rid of this.

One of my goals since I really faced up to what I had let myself become was to get back to my weight when I finished high school.  It's so funny now, because at that time I was JUST at the very top of the "healthy" weight range for my height.  I still felt like I was too big for my size and refused to wear tank tops or a two piece swimsuit.  Of course now I would give anything to be at 150 again :-)  And that's part of my problem - I keep focusing on that 150.

What I should focus on is where I am now.  When I started being serious about losing weight I was at my heaviest, at 210.  I'm now down to 180 as of yesterday morning.  180!  If I look at it from the 150 side I think gosh, I still have to lose 30 pounds.  But then I realized I'm halfway there!!  I already HAVE lost 30 pounds.  Sure, it's taken me 3 years and a lot of ups and downs and hard work.  But dang.  30 pounds.  That's something to be proud of!

Now I'm trying to change my attitude.  Instead of focusing on the 30 pounds to go I want to focus on getting in shape.  I love the active lifestyle everyone has here and I just can't keep up.  Like last weekend, a group of my friends invited me to go on a hiking weekend in the Alps in Italy.  And I didn't go simply because I know I can't keep up.  I hate that.  I'm missing out on fantastic things.

So I'm trying to have a positive outlook.  Dwell on where I've come from (being out of breath after walking up two flights of stairs) instead of how far away the finish is.  Not easy for sure...


Oh, and by the way, I chopped off my hair, and I love it :-)  Here is the result:

Too impatient...

Yeah so, I'm certainly not going to wait until I lose another 30 pounds to get a haircut. I'm already fed up with this crazy mop on my head and it's not even hot yet.  I also realized that I've been worried it would make me look fatter, but really I've lost the weight that was on my face, so it's pretty much an oval instead of a circle like it was.  So it would maybe even look better instead of weighing me down with this mess.

I've been collecting some pictures of things that I like so hopefully I can pick something out to bring.  Thought I'd put them up here for any comments or suggestions from my readers (all 2 of you - ha ha!).

I considered  getting this haircut at Christmas time but then decided I would try the long hair thing.

Not sure about this one, might be poofy with my thick hair.

This one might be better; obviously not blond!

Cute and summery, but I'd be afraid it would turn out mullet-y.

At least this model has thick hair...

Cute, though I won't have a team of professionals to style my hair...

My favorite, but not sure it would work since her hair is obviously thinner than mine.

And finally for laughs, a "makeover" I did on Torey's Mary Kay site (Casey's fault).

Any thoughts?  Or other suggestions?

April showers bring May.....showers??

It has been incredibly dreary here lately. Cold and misty rain every day, and for every day in the forecast. Yuck. I want the sun and warmth and dry weather back!!! It's also thrown a wrench in my biking to work for exercise plan. Since all I want to do on a cold rainy morning is stay in my bed for another few hours. But hopefully the sun will return soon and I can get to this biking thing!

We're also trying to resurrect the idea of the girl's soccer team here at PSI. Last year Lea (my office-mate) and I decided to get a bunch of girls together to play soccer for fun, at lunch or sometime. We don't want to join the guy's team because then you never get to do anything, just run around and watch them kick the ball. So far we've got 5 people (including us) plus another potential 4 or so. That would make a very nice 4-on-4 game. We just haven't found a place to play yet. But I'm sure we will.

So all in all things are looking pretty good. I've got a strange combination of laziness and cabin fever, but they will both pass as soon as the weather cheers up. I leave you with a song...

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, mister golden sun,
Please shine down on me....

Weight loss status: Currently at 183 pounds. Eating has been well, up and down. Today I did fairly well; not spectacular but a step in the right direction :-) I'm going to start riding my bike to work this week. Would have started today but it was raining, so I opted for the bus instead. Tomorrow I go to Zurich for my class instead of going to PSI, so I'm planning to start on Wednesday. I'll probably go one or two days a week at first and then hopefully move up to most days when the weather is nice. That is a nice 24 km of bike riding each time! It will take slightly longer than going by bus, but there are showers at the lab and I will have more energy I'm sure. I know when I was going to the gym first thing in the morning in KS I had much more energy all the time. Unfortunately the gym isn't open until 9am here....not so convenient. I'm definitely not going to renew my membership since the hours make it not worth it.

In other news, I find myself struggling to be happy with my state in life all the time. I mean, I am really happy with where I am. I've got a Masters degree, two years to go on my PhD, and I'm getting paid to live in Europe. I've got a great family, friends, have everything I need; yet I still manage to find myself feeling like I'm missing something. Of all the things I have going for me, the ones that are most important to me as the end goals of my life are not even on the horizon. I want so badly to have a husband and family. I have faith that in time those things will come, when they are supposed to. I realize that if I had those things now I wouldn't be able to be doing my PhD in Switzerland, jetting around the world to workshops, schools, and meetings.

But at the same time, I see so many of my friends getting married, having kids, buying their first houses, and starting on their lives. And I just feel a bit left behind. I need some help in accepting that this is where I am supposed to be in life and being satisfied with it. I could really use a spiritual director, yet there isn't anyone here that I know of who offers it. Funny, when I had it in KS I didn't really take advantage of it. Mostly because I was being told things I didn't want to hear, even though I need to hear them. But now I would do whatever I could to have that guidance...

Hello again!

Wow, I've been gone a long time again. There hasn't been much progress in my losing weight project in any case. I am currently hovering around 185, and have been eating crap food and not active at all. Unless you count sitting on the train to and from Zürich everyday. But I don't.

HOWEVER, when you find yourself failing you just have to pick yourself up and start again. So that's what I'm doing. The weather is getting nice and I'm buying a bicycle from a friend, so I plan to start riding that. I'll work my way up to be able to ride from home to PSI, which is something like 10 or 12 km I think. On the plus side some of my friends do it so I'll have people pushing me to join them. I think I'm giving up my gym membership though. My schedule is too irregular for it to be worth the money. Instead I'll bike, and join the pool/ice skating rink. Which costs way less. And is more fun.

Also, I've gone back and forth several times on whether I should keep my hair shorter or grow it out longer. I've always wanted to try something shorter, like a chin length bob or something, that I could wear either straight or wavy, but I've always been afraid that being as heavy as I am it would just make me look heavier. And I don't want that at all. Plus haircuts are so expensive here and I am cheap. So, I've now decided that I will make that my reward. When I get to my goal weight of 150 I'll try out a new and shorter haircut. And if I don't like it, then who cares, cause I'll look all awesome and skinny! Until then, it will just keep growing on its own. I finally have a goal with a reward to reach for!

Doubts

There are days when I think I'm just not cut out for this. I've had a lot of those days lately. I just can't seem to get my head around this analysis and computing stuff. I guess I just don't spend enough time on it. But I don't like it, don't get it, and am not interested in it. I suppose it's no wonder that I can't figure it out when I don't spend extra time reading miles of TWiki pages and code.....I just can't make myself concentrate. I don't know what it is. I never used to have problems learning things. How the heck am I going to do an analysis, write, and defend a thesis all in the next 2-3 years????

Shifting plans

Well, we ended up shifting the Superbowl party to Sunday afternoon, because some people couldn't come on Thursday and the weather was not so fun to be walking around in. Then I had plans to go for my second attempt at skiing on Saturday with a friend who is teaching me. Unfortunately Laure (the friend) sprained her ankle yesterday playing tennis at lunch time, and as she had already injured it not too long ago the doctors put her in a removable cast for a week. So that kind of knocked out the skiing plans. :-) But thats ok, I hope she recovers quickly and maybe we can go next weekend. But that will leave my Saturday free to clean my apartment and make the gumbo for Sunday. And to practice my clarinet.

Why do I need to practice my clarinet? Because I have decided to join the Stadtmusik Baden, which is the local concert band. I think I might be crazy to join a concert band where rehearsals are held in German and when I haven't played my clarinet regularly for 4 years! But it should be fun, and I've been assured by a couple people that the language won't be much of a problem. My first rehearsal is next Wednesday night, and the music is being mailed to me today, so I should get it tomorrow. That gives me a few days to practice and try to build up my embouchure as much as I can before jumping into a 2 hour rehearsal! Yikes.

Yesterday was my first trip to the gym in 2010. I decided to get into things slowly and just did about half an hour on the bike. (and went 17.3km!) I may or may not go again this evening...kind of depends on how I'm feeling. Between Christmas, just being back in LA, and my trips to Argentina and Hamburg, I definitely gained back the weight I'd managed to lose before Christmas. But thats ok, I'll get it off again.

Superbowl party planning and missing LA

So I definitely stayed up to watch the Superbowl on Sunday, which with the time difference was from 12:30-4:00am (so I guess technically on Monday). But I also recorded it so that I could have a bunch of the people from lab over to watch and teach them about real football! I also decided I'll make a gumbo, since it's supposed to get cold and snow again. And really, what goes better with football than gumbo?

Then thinking about making a gumbo makes me miss home! Good food, good music, friendly people, and nice hot and humid weather. So now I'm listening to some good ol' cajun music. And this evening when I get home from work I'm planning to make my roux while singing and danging along to L'Angelus!! (I love them!)

Conflicting wants...

I'm caught between the desire to not spend CHF 100 on a haircut here in Switzerland every few months and the desire for my hair to look nice. Also caught between the fact that my hair probably looks better long, and the fact that I love how easy it is to have it shorter. Tough decisions...if only Whoorl would pick me for Hair Thursday!!!