This week in brief.

Work has been stressful.  I spend most of my time "writing my thesis" but so far I am very unsatisfied with the product I have produced.  I want to give Dave my climatology chapter sometime early this week, so I have been working my ass off, but I am still pretty nervous about what he is going to say.

On Tuesday our softball team "the snoweaters" won our first game of the Spring season.  We beat the other team 17-0 ... go us!!!

I took Thursday off to go skiing with my friend Jamie at Copper.  It was a blast ... I think that I am right where I was when the ski season ended net year.  Next year I am going to get a pass and ski a lot more :)

Today Anna and I swam for 2 hours straight.  I swam a total of 4400 yards (exactly 2.5 miles!) and Anna swam 5500 yards (3.125 miles).  After swimming we had breakfast at Luciles ... it was amazing.  We had beignets, breakfast burritos, coffee and amazing buttery biscuts.  I love working out and then getting to pig out!

After swimming I came home and wrote a little before heading over to Katies house for a softball bbq.  All and all it was a good time and we came up with names for the backs of each of our team t-shirts.  We thought it was too boring to use our actual names so we came up with some pretty dorky nick names ... here are some examples:

Rachel (me) - "rmac", like bigmac i guess??

Jim - "Lord Kelvin"

Katie - "Perfect 2" - she is #2

Michelle - "Michilicious"

Kazuyo - "choo choo" - something funny that came up when playing train dominos

Nick - "sequesterer" - as in carbon sequestration!

I know this makes us pretty dorky ... but I think we are freaking awesome!

Tomorrow I am going to spend the whole day working... trying to finish up this chapter so that I can finally move on and do some more analysis!!

@ The Bean Cycle

The Bean Cycle is a local coffee shop here in fort collins connected with your everyday anarchist used  bookstore.  I discovered it on a random date I went on the first week I lived here in CO ... and well lets just say it was the best thing that came out of that date.  I've spent many a morning/afternoon/night working there, drinking coffee and hanging out with friends.  All and all I love it.  It is owned by two sisters and their brother ... I think (don't hold me to that) and everyone there is into riding bikes and hanging out and spending time outside.  It has a good vibe.  But as always, there are two things that really freaking piss me off about the Bean Cycle ... and I just need to vent.

1) Sometimes their service just sucks.  They don't really seem to have any policy on how much time people are allowed to spend randomly talking to people rather than making my coffee.  There have been many occasions where I have stood in line for over 10 min ... while they make one persons smoothie and I have just left because I don't think that they will ever get to me.  Not so good for business if you ask me.  They need to make a list and write down people's names and then call them up to the counter when their drinks are done ... I HATE WATING IN LINE!!!!  There is also this one girl who works there who drives me nuts ... mostly because she is very slow and she always tries to have these weird/random conversations with every single person who she makes coffee for.  Whatever ... maybe I am just a bitch.

2)  I am worried that I might die from drinking the water there.  Their tap water tastes like their bathroom smells... which I realize is totally gross, but it is also true, and I am not the only one who feels that way.  I always make sure to bring a big bottle of water with me when I go to the Bean Cycle ... because well I can't drink the plain water they provide.  It has a metallic, moldy dingy gross taste and I am pretty sure its because the building is over 100 years old and the pipes have never been changed.  If I had children .. I wouldn't allow them to drink things made with the water from the bean cycle for fear of lead poisoning.  Funny how I don't really notice this taste when I drink the coffee there ... good thing :)

But after all my moaning and bitching ... I still end up at the bean cycle at least once a week ... if not more.  It's awesome :)  Fair Trade coffee makes me happy!

weekend recap

So I just posted a blog 2 min ago, but it left me feeling unsatisfied.  It didn't say all that I wanted it to say and I am only leaving it up, because I think that this post will probably also miss out on a few points that I possibly made in the previous post. 

I have mixed feelings about this weekend.  It started out pretty good when I went to Melissa's birthday party on Friday night and had a good time!  Then Saturday morning I woke up and went to my yoga class.  I've been going to this class since the semester started, and I love it.  Going to yoga regularly has been amazing.  I am really starting to get back into the swig of things and this class energizes me for the weekend.  I am starting to remember why I used to love going to yoga and it is helping me to focus on the more spiritual aspects of my life.  Sometimes, not really being a particularly religious person, I feel like I don't really know how express my more creative side, but going to yoga really opens up a whole new/more interesting part of my life.  I also love how the instructor really emphasizes "honoring your practice" and "honoring yourself".  It helps remind me to value the good parts of my life, and to appreciate the person that I am.  

After yoga I went home and made the most amazing chicken salad sandwich ever ... I am obsessed with chicken salad especially when I put grapes and cashews in it :).  After that I headed over to the bean cycle to get some work done, and I was amazingly productive.  At this point of my weekend, I thought ... nothing could really go wrong and I was going to have the best weekend ever, ... but then I went to softball practice.  

Practice was really not the greatest, and it reminded me of why I quit playing at the age of 13 (when I had only started playing when i was 12).  To start, I was trying to break in my new glove ... and I couldn't catch the ball if my life depended on it.  Then about 15 min into the practice I got hit with a line drive right on my kneecap.  I really really had to fight the urge to cry and throw up, lay down on the ground and give up immediately, but I "manned up" and finished out the practice.  And let me tell you ... I felt like crap.  I couldn't catch anything, and Jim (the nice guy he is) kept trying to give me pointers/help me out, but mostly I just felt really really bad every time a ball went past me and I just wanted to go home and cry ... which is exactly what I did.  After biking home, I walked into the door, walked up to my roommates room and FELL APART.  So of course to make myself feel better ... I went to McDonalds.... a not so good move when you are trying to loose a little bit of weight :).

Fortunately, Saturday night ended up being pretty good and it turned my weekend back around.  I went over to Katie's house for a "girls night" of laughing and drinking.  We talked about the most random things like porn, climbing, crushes...and a few girls even dressed up in hot denim one-piece outfits that I will post as soon as I get my camera back.

And this morning I woke up a little beaten and brused, but emotionally in a pretty good mood.  I made another chicken salad sandwhich and headed to a coffee shop to do work.  And to finish out this somewat weird weekend I plan on going to a relaxation yoga class that Anna has been trying to get me to go to for a while.  My knee is pretty sore so I might just end up doing "child's pose" for half the class, but hopefully It will be restorative and I'll be ready to tackle yet another hectic week :)

random observations

I have finally started getting to know some of the people in the classes below me in the Atmos department at CSU and I have to say ... they rock!

Going to a friends birthday party on a Friday night, drinking some good beer and talking with friends is probably one of my top ten ways to spend an evening out. 

Waking up on a Saturday morning at 8:30am and heading to an amazing yoga class at 9:30 is the best way to start out the weekend.  

Breakfast has become my favorite meal of the day.  I wish that I lived in Boulder so that I could go to Burnt Toast or Sunflower every single weekend.  I love going out to breakfast, ordering a huge cup of coffee, eating an amazing European style breakfast and reading the paper.  I wish that there was a good crepe place in Fort Collins ... or a place where I could get a breakfast quiche and a salad :)

I tend to be very loud when I am in a group of people and sometimes I feel like I monopolize the conversation.  The sad part is that I really don't want to monopolize the conversation, because most people have significantly cooler/more exciting things to say that I do ... I just like to talk and I get over enthusiastic.  I have been trying to work on this ... but so far I have pretty much failed.  

I don't think that I could survive grad-school (and I know that I wouldn't have survived undergrad) without coffee shops.  Its one of my favorite ways to spent time working on the weekend. 

People watching is awesome.  I sometimes wonder if people ever get tired "trying" too look a certain way ... don't they feel like they are constantly playing the part of a hippy or punk rocker etc.   I don't think that I really have any specific style...I don't think that dressing a certain way actually defines my identity ... talking and laughing defines who I am :)

Girls like to gossip. 

A few of us got together last night to drink, play games and gossip.  Lets just say that drinking and gossiping won out ... although we did play catch-phrase for about 15 min.

Climbing people really only talk about climbing and they really only have friends who climb or they try to get their non climbing friends to start climbing.  I will never "fit in" to the climbing community ... but I really do enjoy doing it.  I am trying to figure out a way where I can climb, have fun, and not be horribly intimidated by other climbers.  

I should climb outside more this summer.  I should also climb more peaks :).

It's almost summer in Fort Collins.  I can't wait!

I put up with Fort Collins in the winter, because I know how amazing it is to live here in the summer.  

tuesday night embarrassment

For the past year or so I have been playing poker at a local bar every Tuesday night.  At first I was really bad ... because I had no idea how to play poker.  I would joke around with everyone at the table, and they would give me pointers and help me figure out how I should have played my hand.  It was nice ... no expectations for being good allowed me to really just enjoy playing poker and hanging out.  Then randomly, after a little experience I started playing pretty well...I would make it to the final table and a lot of the guys were "impressed".  But recently ... I don't know what happened, but I have started to play like crap.  I am super unconfident about my playing, I over analyze every move and even when I get cards I don't play them strong enough so I end up losing on the River.  To be honest ... I don't even know if I like playing poker at this bar anymore, yet for some reason I keep going week after week. 

What I really want to do is get a weekly (or maybe a twice monthly) game going with some friends.  It would be fun to just drink, hangout, and possibly win some money :) ... I think I will more actively recruit people to play poker and hopefully sometime soon I will get my game back and start to enjoy playing again.

3rd person commentary

So I spend too much time on facebook.  I spend so much time on facebook, that I now can only think it terms of status messages:

Rachel is pretty sure that Gilmore Girls gives her a false sense of how the world works.  She is pretty sure that she will not fall in love with a Diner owner from a small town or marry into a rich family so she should probably start working on her thesis so that she can support herself.  She is also pretty sure that no one is quite that honest or witty ... ever.

Rachel is grumpy today because it was cold and windy.  She also had to work on a project for her writing class, which went surprisingly well.  

Rachel is a perfectionist and is annoyed when other people are not.

Rachel maybe isn't as happy with her life right now as she would like to be.  

Rachel has doubts about grad-school.

Rachel is thinking it might be a good idea to delete her facebook account so that she might get back to being a normal person.

Rachel loves neutral milk hotel and joanna newsom.

Rachel wishes that she spent more time doing the things she likes to do only she can't really remember what it is that she likes to do so it is kinda a catch 22

Rachel really didn't like reading catch 22.

Rachel really wants a beer and to be skinner, but the former really doesn't help the latter.

Rachel should be cleaning the kitchen, but she would much rather blog.

Rachel is wishing that the piles of crap in her room, her office, her car (ie her life) would just clean themselves up because she doesn't have the energy to deal with them.

Rachel is worried that she identifies with the Tegan and Sara song "You Wouldnt like me" a little to much lately

Rachel is wondering where her self-esteem went lately and wants to know how she can get it back.

Rachel hopes that she will go to Europe this summer or fall

Rachel plans way to much of her life and wants to be more spontaneous, can you help her with that?

Rachel hopes that at work tomorrow she will be productive and not go on facebook, randomly talk to people in the hallway for hours and feel happy when she goes climbing.

Rachel regrets eating an entire box of mac and cheese yesterday ... and today

Rachel thinks that if she had worked out today she might have been in a better mood

Rachel overall is a happy person, she is  just experiencing some turbulence today.

Ok the third person thing has finally gotten to be a little annoying, maybe I am done thinking that way...